2/26-28/13 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way, I stopped and bought a supply of caulk. Then I proceeded on to Brian Odger's place and picked up a shower pan he had for Marilyn. From there I went to our tax accountant in Woodinville and delivered some tax documents. And from there I proceeded on to Monroe where I visited with Uncle Charles for a while. And, after that, I proceeded on to Skykomish where I delivered the shower pan to Marilyn and had a wonderful lunch and visit with her and George.

I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 1:20. While I was turning up all the thermostats, I discovered that the bedroom heater had failed again just as it had on 4/12/12. It would intermittently lose power. That was bad news. I thought it had been fixed since I replaced a plug receptacle on 4/24/12 but evidently I was going to have to diagnose it again.

After a short nap, I made the special strip of ceiling board that I needed to finish up the ceiling span between Grid C and Grid D. Then I took it up on the scaffold and nailed it, along with one full-size board, to complete the two spans between Grid B and Grid D. That marked half of the job; two out of four spans.

On Wednesday there was a skiff of new snow that had fallen overnight. I built a fire in the wood stove and went to work on the bedroom heater. I opened the circuit breaker and removed the heater from the wall. Then I opened up the electrical box that was supplied with the heater, and which also serves as the cover for the supply electrical box I had built into the wall, and I looked at the connector plugs. I had replaced the female half of the connector on 4/24/12 with a new one because the old one had shown signs of heating at the pin for the black wire. Now I could see that the mating male pin for the black wire showed signs of overheating on the male side of the connector.

I opened up the male plug and saw that the black wire had indeed gotten pretty hot. I figured it had not been clamped into its socket properly. When I released the cable from the clamp at the end of the plug assembly, I was surprised that all four wires just fell out of their clamps.

Evidently none of the set screws on any of the four clamps had been tightened at all during the manufacturing process. The only connection made was that each wire was seated in the hole in the metal clamp, and that had evidently been enough contact to give me the intermittent performance I had experienced. I began to wonder whether or not any of my other heaters had this same manufacturing defect.

To fix the problem, I decided to eliminate the connector assembly altogether. In my opinion, it is totally unnecessary and simply adds twelve extra points of failure for no purpose. If you want to remove the heater from the wall, there is enough slack in the cable to do so without disconnecting the two plugs. If you want to remove the heater completely, it would be easier to simply undo the four wire nuts in the supply box rather than disconnect those two plugs. There is a hidden clamp that snaps the two plugs together and you can't get at that clamp to release it without completely removing the heater box from the supply box. And, if you do that, those four wire nuts are right there waiting for you to undo them.

So I simply cut the cable at the connector and wire nutted the four wires directly to the wires in the supply box. That is one connection per wire. Using the manufactured design, each wire was connected to a clamp with a set screw (which in this case didn't get tightened) which connects it to a pin. (one point of failure). The pin is then inserted into the female socket in the other connector (second point of failure). The female pin is clamped to a short jumper wire (third point of failure) and the jumper is then wire nutted to the supply wire in the supply box. (fourth point of failure). So in the original design for the four wires, there are sixteen points of failure. In my method, there are only four. As I noted on 4/24/12, I am not impressed with the engineering that went into those heaters. I hope this will be the last trouble they give me.

After lunch and a nap, I went back to work on the ceilings outside. I used up my complete supply of stained boards and completed half of the span between Grid D and Grid E. By then it was time to quit for the day anyway.

On Thursday morning it was snowing fairly heavily. I stained 10 boards, which was the number I had calculated that I need to finish up the rest of the outside ceilings. It is a great feeling to be getting close to finishing that job. I can still occasionally hear the packrats scurrying around in that cavity but I have found no evidence of damage in there since I cleaned their nest out. I just hope that the last one leaves before I nail on the last board. Otherwise he'll be stuck inside.

After I finished staining, Bert and Ernie showed up on the front porch and I gave them their usual hugs and biscuits. They were each carrying an inch or so of snow on their backs which didn't seem to bother them at all. I brushed it off for them while they ate their biscuits.

I left for home at 11:30 feeling good about the progress and hoping to get over the pass with no trouble, which I did.