Turned on the power to all of the circuits in the house and was seeing some strange behavior in a couple of places.
Porch light didn’t work. Wasn’t just a burnt-out bulb. Lower priority. I’ll get to it when I can.
The yard lamp (flood lamp) didn’t work. No idea if it’s a failed sodium bulb, which I’ll eventually replace with an LED. Its receptacle at the base of the pole was a GFI-variety that had no power to it. Hmm… higher priorities, but seeing both lights out suggests that the switches to each of them may be an issue.
Higher priority, though, is to get power to the outlets in the house. Spot-checked a few outlets in the house and discovered that all of the receptacles in the main living room were, uh, rather odd.
Typically, in North America, you’d see about 120VAC on a household receptacle. And I did see the expected 120VAC… on one outlet, then its other outlet in the same receptacle was rather representative of the rest of the receptacles in the living space.
Instead of the expected 120VAC, it was… 8VAC. Huh?
Another receptacle registered about 15VAC.
Okay, now it’s getting damned odd…
Seven or eight receptacles in the main living room were horribly (dangerously) under-voltage. After I threw all the breakers then removed all of the outlet and switch covers in the living room, I discovered an omen… a bad omen…
Hmm… that’s a red wire-nut… which would be rated for use on up to four 10-gauge wires on a 20-amp circuit. And it’s binding together only three (!) 14-gauge (!!) aluminum (!!!) wires. And it’s over-effing heated to the point that it’s melted.
The only way to overheat a circuit is to draw more than 80% of its rated capacity for a prolonged period of time — more than a few minutes. I’d wager that the previous owner (occupants?) had multiple electric space heaters plugged in round the room that they ran constantly. And, seeing the kludge of cobbled-together electrical add-ons, they were probably chasing problems that were entirely of their own creation.
I’ll just plan on putting in new receptacles and just replace the wiring with some proper 12/2 cable to all of the points known to be bad.
Dear God, I just had a realization — knowing that the previous owners cobbled things together, it’s occurred to me that the entire circuit is very possibly not connected to a breaker at all. I certainly hope it’s not as bad as I image it to be.
It’ll have to wait until next Friday when I can get out there again and dig into it.
Son of a…
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Reminds me of something that I saw in one of the data centers I managed several years ago where teams expected a 20A circuit to have 20A of load all the time. This is what happens when you run a 20A circuit regularly between 16 and 20A.
So I’m using the iPhone Measure app to plot out a size of a small structure. After I capture two edges, I walk over to virtually draw out a third… carefully STEPPING OVER one of the virtual drawn lines.
🤦♂️
Yep, augmented reality can be immersive enough.
I know how to use and am quite comfortable with a landscape tape (which I have) and a theodolite (which I don’t have), I have to say that, yes, the iPhone’s Measure tool is quite accurate — it does have some curious behavior over uneven surfaces, but over the surface that I was estimating a layout, it’s demonstrated to be within about an inch over a 26-foot distance.
If the surface were flatter, it would probably be spot-on.
Now, if we could find a way to have it snap to 90-degree angles — that would be even more amazing than it already is.
To make the lot livable, we’ll need water. Without water, it has no value.
It has a well, 300 feet deep in our case. And, after some additional revelations, it’s probable that we’ll need to:
blow out the silt and sediment in the existing well: cheapest monetarily, but still requires, minimally, tearing down the pump house, $5K; OR
drill the existing well another 50 to 100 feet deep, $12K; OR
drill an entirely new well. Upwards of $30K
Now it gets even more expensive. The original cost estimate was in the neighborhood for $1500 of parts and labor. Minimally, add a zero.
Unfortunately, it’s abundantly clear that the previous owners did little to care for or make things last, so the value of the existing infrastructure now is a liability, not an asset.
I’ve heard from a few nearby land owners that their wells are anywhere between 150 and 300 feet. One neighboring house, quite close to ours, is bored to 377ft.
Right, so what’s the depth to the actual aquifer in the region? The driller said, “There’s no aquifer in that area”. Yet, checking over the maps from the USGS, it would tend to indicate that the Grande Ronde aquifer lies closer to 400ft below the surface. We’re on the northeast fringe area of the aquifer.
Knowing that the well-report for our well is 300ft deep, and judging from the available evidence, the previous owners drilled 300ft deep wells, twice, and one of them had removed the pump at some point and had added a cistern. Presumably because the well wasn’t producing as much as they required and the cistern served a means of kicking the proverbial can down the road.
Where does that leave us presently?
I don’t like the idea of just doing things ‘good enough’ and will always leave things in a better condition than when we arrived.
Have the existing well bored another 100ft? Or have a new well drilled to 400ft? They’re both expensive — one more than the other — but we’ll have to find a way to make the cost work.
Brought the boat up to dad’s house in Soap Lake to store it temporarily with the travel trailer until I have a suitable location to park them both. Noticed that something was amiss when I looked at the travel trailer…
Battery cover was on the ground.
Hmm… strap was cut (you can just un-lash it), cables were cut (poorly), battery missing.
$125 battery, maybe $20 worth of cables. I should probably notify the police department. Wouldn’t expect them to do anything other than log the occurrence.
Soooo… let’s find the local non-emergency number for Soap Lake PD…
Maybe the link I had available is outdated. (Strike 1)
I’ll just go to the city’s page then drill down from there.
Well, that’s additionally unexpected — it returns a default ‘bluehost’ unprovisioned page. Means that the hosting provider isn’t presenting a page or its DNS is misconfigured.
No idea how long its been that way. (Strike 2)
Okay, let’s just search again on Google for the “Soak Lake Police Department non-emergency number”. I prepare myself to simply say, “Hey, I know you guys are super busy, but I’d like to just report a petty theft so it can be logged.” Right, that’ll do.
Let’s give it a shot… **dial, dial, dial…** Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, “Goodbye.” **click** (Strike 3)
Uh… did its computer just hang up on me?
It wasn’t long ago that I’d commented that somebody had included on their receipts a number to dial for complaints/feedback. But the number that was included was a non-number (000-000-0000 goes nowhere except “the operator”). Perhaps Soap Lake has caught on and simply routed their calls to /dev/null to save themselves the troubles.
“We’ve had no calls? Really? Wow, we must be doing absolutely amazing out there…”
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Update: went out hunting near Wilson Creek the following morning and was able to reach them upon our return.
the rest of me 
