6/22-24/10 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I was met by Bert and Ernie shortly after I parked. It was a pretty warm day and when I went into the cabin I noticed that the ventilation fan was running doing its job. It was 85 degrees in the loft which means that the fan can’t keep up with the hot air. Hopefully, this will not be the case once the ceiling insulation is installed.

It was too hot to work in the loft, so instead I installed a telephone distribution block in the wiring closet at the top of the pantry. I had made the block over the weekend. Then, I reconfigured the telephone line going to the bedroom so that it went to the distribution block instead. Then I strung a new telephone wire from the block to the bedroom. I was happy to hear dialtone in the bedroom phone when that was done.

Next, I hooked the telephone wire coming down from the loft to the distribution block. By that time it had cooled off in the loft somewhat so I went up and installed the telephone jack and box in the phony log. I powered the phone up there with an extension cord and plugged it into the new jack. I was glad again to hear dialtone in that phone. Before I quit for the day, I installed the receptacles in the wall behind the phony log and temporarily energized them with a jumper wire and an extension cord. Then I plugged the phone into the receptacle as it will be permanently.

At various times during the day, I fed a chipmunk who has gotten very friendly.

On Wednesday I noticed a lot of rodent turds on the porch. I swept them off and wondered whether I had packrats again. I decided to set a trap in the evening to catch one and relocate him or her if I could.

I spent the day installing receptacles in the loft. It was nice and cool working up there in the morning. It started warming up in the afternoon and the ventilation fan came on. But it also rained and thundered a couple of times so it never did get unbearably hot up there.

I was short one receptacle pair, so I couldn’t finish up the last box. The breaker blew the first couple times I energized the circuit but I found the problem and fixed it. One screw was sticking out too far and grounded against the EMT connector. Once that was fixed, the receptacles all worked fine.

The chipmunk showed up and got the usual peanut treats throughout the day.

Before I quit for the day, I set my Paiute Indian deadfall trap to see if I couldn’t catch a packrat.

On Thursday morning I found the trap unsprung and all the bait was still intact. I took that as good news. It meant that the turds on the porch were from a diurnal animal like the pine squirrels or the chipmunks. Packrats are nocturnal, and since I haven’t seen any packrat nests, or other evidence of them, I don’t think there are any around at the moment. That’s good news.

Next I mixed up the last batch of fertilizer that I had and took it to the sequoia trees. I was very pleased to see that Ellen was now completely green except for some dead brown leaves at the bottom. All the yellowish leaves had turned green and the tree looked healthy. I split the fertilizer mixture between Ellen, Chuck, Bill, Andrew, and a little for Dave. All the trees look healthy so I think they will all survive into adulthood. At least I hope so.

Next, I went to work stringing the wire for the water heater. I had brought 22 feet of 10-2 wire with me. My original plan was to run the wire down from the distribution panel, but after mulling it over, I decided that I wanted to come into the panel from the top instead. So I bored the holes and ran the wire up through the loft floor and then down the wall at the back of the linen closet and down into the crawlspace above the water heater.

Unfortunately, using this route, the wire was two feet too short. I spent some time trying to figure out how to shorten the route, but I gave up and decided to buy a longer piece of wire. I figured this is probably a common problem for amateur electricians.

My plan was to run the 10-2 Romex cable into a junction box in the crawlspace ceiling and then run an armored cable from there to the water heater. To get the AWG 10 wires I needed for inside the armored cable, I decided to salvage them from a length of 10-3 cable I had which I didn’t plan to use anywhere. I was surprised to find that all the paper inside the cable was soaking wet. That convinced me to not use any salvaged cable that I might have.

Before I left for home, I took some pictures of the recent projects that I have completed. I left for home at 1:30 and when I reached Highway 2, I had to wait quite a while for a huge traffic jam. There had been a serious accident right at the 59er diner and the fire trucks and the cops had the road blocked both directions. There were cars backed up as far as I could see in both directions. After waiting for 10 minutes or so, I was able to get past the problem and be on my way.