|
|
|
induction stove top cable
Thursday, August 3 2023
At 4:00pm, Gretchen went off to meet up with friends (Alana and perhaps Chrissy) to see the Barbie movie (which is reportedly a masterpiece) a second time. Meanwhile, as prerequisite for installing a new induction-based stovetop, I did the work of pulling a fat cable containing three eight gauge wires and a ground from the kitchen island back to the circuit breaker box in the boiler room. To do this, I expected to have to cut a hole in the ceiling of Gretchen's basement library, though there was some chance I could avoid even that if I could somehow drill a hole sideways through a floor joist from a large hole cut in the floor under the kitchen island. To cut that hole in the floor, I first removed three drawers from the island and then two boards in the island "furniture" blocking access to the floor. Next I got out my five inch hole saw, which has never really worked right since I either ran it backwards for too long or tried cutting something excessively abrasive. Again, it failed me completely, though it did score a nice circle that I could use as the basis for a series of cuts using an oscillating tool (a tool that, let's be honest, handles many cutting situations that are otherwise impossible). Those cuts allowed me to remove a five-inch-wide circular plug from the subfloor, giving me access to the inter-joist bay adjacent to one leading to an existing access hole in the basement hallway ceiling. But there was no way to reliably drill a hole through the stud that was in my way (though I checked using a tiny USB-connected camera; getting a computer to work with that was a whole other ordeal I won't bore you with). So I ended up using the five-inch hole saw, flawed though it was, to cut a hole through the drywall ceiling into the joist bay wanted to acccess from Gretchen's library. It struggled even in drywall, but eventually I had a hole, and immediately discovered an existing hole through the joist between that joist bay and the bay I could reach from under the kitchen island. This allowed me to (with great effort and a lot of running back and forth) to pull the fat romex cable down from the part of the island where the new induction stovetop will go into the inter-joist bay reading to the hole in the basement ceiling. Then I was able to use a cable-pulling fish line to pull the cable into the basement hallway. After that, I struggled trying to get a fish line though a pair of joists that had no access hole between them (something I'd apparently managed to do multiple times in the past). I eventually got it, but not with fish tape but with a length of flexible copper tubing (which is stiffer than fish tape). From there, I used a combination of fish tape and string to get the cable back to the circuit breaker box. When that was finished, all I had left to do was to hook up the cable to a circuit breaker and to the induction stove stop. But all the work of pulling cable through all the places it needed to go had taken about four and a half hours. I celebrated my victory not only with a bath, but also with a rule-defying allotment of alcohol consumption (I'm sure I'll pay dearly at the gates of Mormon heaven).
Since last night (when it had been unseasonably cool) I'd been wearing a light long-sleeve shirt. This morning I'd discovered I couldn't easily remove it because it had adhered to the large abrasion wound near my left elbow. Fortunately, though, tonight's soak in the tub was enough to soften the hardened scab material (supposedly blood platelets) enough that I could finally remove the shirt.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?230803 feedback
previous | next |
