8/10-12/10 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:50 and was pleased to be greeted by Bert and Ernie. I haven’t seen them for a couple weeks. It has probably been too hot or the mosquitoes were too much for them. Anyway, it was good to see them.

It had rained recently because everything was wet, but the weather was clear and cool. Just perfect. I had a pretty bad cold but I decided to go up and work anyway. I just might work slower but at least I will get something done.

I started out by installing the dryer receptacle circuit, number 37. The big plumbing vents go horizontally through the studs above where I wanted to install the outlet, so I couldn’t run the cable up to the ceiling. Yet I wanted the cable to come down from the ceiling at the distribution panel. So I strung the 6-3 w/gnd cable up from the panel, across the ceiling to the bathroom wall, then down between two studs to the floor, then under the floor to the outlet location, and then back up to the outlet box.

This AWG 6 wire is pretty big and stiff so I wasn’t sure how to wire up the outlet. At first I took the shortest route from the clamp directly to the receptacle, but then I realized that you wouldn‘t be able to take the receptacle out of the box. I didn’t think the inspectors would like that.

Instead, I left a loop of the wires that wound completely around the inside of the box before they were clamped into the receptacle. It occurred to me that that was probably why the receptacle was made in the shape of a cylinder.

After I got the receptacle installed I went into the woods and checked on the sequoia trees and the spring. The trees are all thriving. It was nice that there were no mosquitoes, even in the woods. I had a nice shower before I went in for the night. I was pretty sick but I took night-time cold medicine before I went to bed and slept pretty well.

On Wednesday, I was feeling worse. I took some day-time cold medicine and went to work. I installed the 50 Amp breaker for circuit 37 so I am now ready to plug in a dryer.

Then I started on the utility room heater. After figuring out how to mount it, and laying the bracket out, I started drilling the hole for the cable down through the first log above the floor. I wanted to get this hole as nearly vertical as possible, so I decided to use a long, 54”, augur. I knew from experience that I needed to pull the bit out frequently to get the chips out of the hole so the bit wouldn’t bind up. But, one time I didn’t do it soon enough and the bit bound up.

I thought I could work it out like I had done many times before, but this time it was a lot tighter. Running the drill in reverse didn’t budge it. Using a vise-grip from the top of the shank didn’t budge it. Using a vise-grip near the bottom of the shank didn’t budge it either. The vise-grip ended up slipping on the shank instead of turning the augur.

So to tighten the grip, I got two lengths of ¾” EMT and used them as cheater bars on the handles of the vise-grip. I used them both for squeezing the handles together to get a really tight grip and also as the lever arm to try to turn the augur. It was no use. The thing just wouldn’t budge.

I worked up a big sweat trying all kinds of things, like vacuuming out the chips, digging them out with a wire, picking them out with a tweezers, and running smaller drills down alongside the stuck augur, all without any success.

Finally, I used a ship augur and drilled a second hole just in front of the stuck augur making sure I didn’t get this stuck too. I learned that the ship augur was what I should have used in the first place. It is long enough, 18”, so that the hole was almost as close to being vertical as from using the long augur.

With the second hole drilled all the way through, I used a narrow, ¼”, chisel to enlarge and join the two holes down to the beginning of the augur where it joins the shank. Then using the same chisel, I cut away whatever wood I could reach around the stuck augur scraping the chips down through the second hole to get them out of the way.

I worked on that thing for a couple hours before I finally worked it loose and got it out of there. I used a ship augur to complete the job and it worked like a charm. That was a painful lesson in judgment.

Feeling very tired and sweaty, I went down for a late lunch at 1:00. What a waste of time.

After lunch and a nap, I installed the square electrical box for the utility room heater after doing a lot of figuring about exactly how and where to install the heater mounting bracket. Then I strung the MC cable from the box, down through the hole in the log, then through a diagonal hole I bored through the rim joist, then under the floor, and up to the distribution panel. I connected the cable to the panel and connected the wires inside: the green wire to the equipment ground, the white wire to the other pilot wire, and the red and black wires to the same breaker number 34, 36 as the other leg of this heater circuit.

Then I realized that since the utility room heater is daisy chained to the bathroom heater, I needed two holes down through that log instead of just one. And, I needed to string another cable from the box down through the second hole. By a stroke of serendipity, I had just made the second hole trying to free up the bit that was stuck in the first hole. I stuck a piece of MC cable down that second hole and could see that it would work fine.

I quit for the day feeling pretty sick. I took a hot bath and it felt so good to relax lying in the tub. I shaved while I was lying in the tub, then I showered and went in for the night. I took another dose of night-time cold medicine.

On Thursday morning, I was still feeling crummy. I went to work and bored a second hole through the rim joist in the crawl space for the second cable. Then, I bored two holes down through the log in the bathroom since the bathroom heater is daisy chained to the bedroom heater and I need two holes there too. Then I went down to the crawl space and bored two diagonal holes up through the rim joist for the cables going to the bathroom. Finally, I strung the MC cable from the utility room to the bathroom and connected it to the utility electrical box.

I got the hang of removing the metal sheath from the MC cable, installing the red devils with their tails showing for the inspector, and clamping the cable to the box. Like many jobs, it gets to be fun once you get the hang of it.

Next, I installed the utility room heater mounting bracket. This took quite a while. It is fastened to the wall with four screws at the four corners, and it needs to be plumb and flush with the surface of the electrical box. The way I had figured it, the top two screws would go directly into a log. The bottom two had to be out a few inches from the log below. The electrical box was mounted right on top of the chinking between the two logs.

The first problem was how to shim the space between the lower log and the lower part of the bracket. I tried a few different pieces of wood but I wasn’t satisfied with any of them because of the fit, or the grain direction, or the strength. Finally I made two parallelogram shaped sections of 2x4 that fit nicely and provided a nice strong mount. It took me quite a while to reach this point.

The next problem was that there wasn’t enough clearance for the control box on the heater when it was mounted on the bracket. This was solved simply by chiseling out a recess in the top log, but it took me several iterations of enlarging the recess before I finally got it right. The heater now snaps on and off the bracket easily and fits nicely. It also looks pretty good hanging there.

I was feeling pretty crummy when I left for home at 2:30. I had taken daytime cold medicine earlier to try to dry up my inner ears so I wouldn’t have a problem going over the pass and down the 4000 feet to get home. I also squirted Dristan in my nose when I left. But it wasn’t enough. As soon as I headed down the other side of the pass, my ears started plugging up. I pulled off the road five or six times along the way and sat and waited until I could equalize the pressure in my ears. They never did completely clear, but they cleared enough to get home without too much trouble. They completely cleared a couple hours after I got home so I think I avoided an ear infection which I don’t need.