8/24-26/10 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I arrived at 12:40. Bert and Ernie showed up a few minutes later for hugs and biscuits. Last week, I had set up a second electronic rodent repeller over the two big sawhorses at the end of the porch. There had consistently been packrat poop under the sawhorses, but this time there was none. I didn’t see any packrat poop on the porch, but there was still a lot of mouse poop on top of the workbench and on the sitting bench. Maybe I’ll have to set the repellers up higher off the deck. At least I hope the packrats have moved on.

After moving in, having lunch, and a nap, I installed the heater on the porch side of the living room. The sun was beating through the big windows so I decided to wait until morning to work on the heater under the big window.

On Wednesday I installed the last of the six heaters under the big window in the living room as well as circuit breaker #33, 35 which powers the two living room heaters.

During the work, gray jays would fly past the windows to get my attention, and then I would go out on the porch and feed them peanuts. There were the usual four birds including the one juvenile who now has almost his complete adult coloration. I’m glad they are getting used to coming on the porch because I would like them to visit while the scouts are here in a couple weeks.

While I was working in the distribution panel, I noticed that circuit breaker #31, which powers the septic pump, was off. I thought that was strange. I was trying to figure out what problem could have tripped the breaker. I feared the worst. I flipped the breaker back on and immediately the high-water alarm started sounding outside on the pump control box.

I pushed the button to stop the alarm and opened up the pump control box. I flipped the switch from automatic to off and the contactor snapped. Then I flipped the switch to manual to see if the pump would come on. The contactor snapped again and it sounded like the pump was running.

I got an Allen wrench and went out and removed the lid from the dosing tank. I could hear the pump running and I could see that the water level was high enough to raise the float on the high water switch. I went back to the control box and flipped the switch to off and then to automatic, each time the contactor snapped and the pump sounded like it was running in automatic mode.

Back to the dosing tank, I could see that the water level was going down as the water was being pumped out. Finally, when it got low enough, the pump stopped, just as it should have. Since it seemed like it was behaving correctly, I put the lid back on the tank and closed the control box back up. I was still puzzled about what had happened.

Later it dawned on me that the breaker must not have tripped due to an overload because if it had, red should have shown through the breaker switch. The red doesn’t show if you just turn the breaker off. I concluded that I must have left the breaker turned off by accident. I had re-assigned the breaker from #39 to #31 and I must have left the switch off at that time. All my showers in the meantime had filled the dosing tank above the high water line and that would explain all the symptoms that I saw.

Next I removed the mirror and medicine cabinet that I had temporarily hung between two studs in the bathroom. The mirror had been too high because of the vent pipes that were in the way. I had brought the couplers and glue I would need to lower the pipe, but I decided to wait until morning to cut into the vent pipe. I wanted to minimize the amount of time the sewer gas could escape once I cut the pipes.

Before I showered and quit for the day, I drilled a lower hole through the stud that the pipe runs through ready to take the pipe in its new configuration.

On Thursday morning, I cut the pipe, ran it through the new hole, and connected it back together using two couplers. This lowered the pipe so that I could reinstall the mirror at a more reasonable height. With the mirror installed, I then went to work installing the bathroom light fixture directly over the mirror. This included running a wire from the fixture to the switch box E, and re-routing the two other wires that enter the light fixture box. That work completed the wiring for circuit #6.

I was happy to have the bathroom light working. I plan to temporarily enclose the bathroom with tarps so there will be some privacy for the scouts when they come up. Without that light working, I would have had to rig up some temporary lighting in there.

I left for home at 1:40 feeling very good about having the heaters all working and the bathroom mirror and light in their final configuration.