PSA house dwellers
Mar. 10th, 2019 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2J3syIM
since I didn’t know this was a thing, I mean obviously it’s a thing but I didn’t know it’s a thing you should check and to be fair you probably need to check it every forty years or so:
But especially since this is the first thaw we’ve had in a while, the rain is delightedly getting into places it hasn’t before.
I just noticed that my circuit breaker was dripping water! Did You Know, and this is obvious now that I think about it, your electrical supply has to come into your house somehow? Of course it does! How does it get there? Probably from a pole? Possibly from a buried line, if you’re posh? Either way, it’s got to enter your house from the outdoors. And it’s going to do so via (hang on, this is super obvious) A HOLE IN YOUR HOUSE. Of course it is! If electricity could phase through walls we’d have whole hosts of other problems than the ones we already do. So.
That hole in your house, like ALL holes that go to the outdoors, needs to be weather sealed, because water will get into it. And if water gets into it, water likes to run along surfaces, and so water will run along your electrical mains and into your circuit breaker box. And electricity loves water a lot, and not in ways that you want it to. So you want to keep them separate, this is just generally a good rule for life.
SO that hole where the electricity is coming in? Mine was sealed with caulk. Caulk sometimes gets old, and can shrink and crack. Mine did! So water ran in there.
I have now recaulked it but my father points out that another possibility is that water has also gotten inside the conduit somehow, and that would mean there’s a break somewhere in the conduit– the coating that goes around the outside of the bundle of wires, see, which is in this case some kind of semi-stiff plastic or rubber. I do not know how to check that to see if it’s leaking in! I will leave a plastic dish wedged under the possible leak site and check it frequently, so that I can determine whether water is still coming in.
(and if so: electrician. *money flies away emoji* We need to call one anyway.)
Odds are good it was the caulk, though, since it was thoroughly rotten and broke apart in my hand with no effort.
So like. Just if you have a house and you haven’t looked at that spot in a while, maybe make a point, the next time it’s not gross out, of going outside and looking at the holes where various things go into your house, and seeing if they all look like they’re well-sealed! Before you wind up with this or other problems. The Internet assures me that I must call an electrician immediately before corrosion builds up and my house burns down. I was going to call one anyway but I turned the mains off and dried everything out with paper towels first, and maybe we won’t be instantly killed in our sleep.
Whew! So, all my clocks are reset now… happy daylight savings end y’all.
(Your picture was not posted)
since I didn’t know this was a thing, I mean obviously it’s a thing but I didn’t know it’s a thing you should check and to be fair you probably need to check it every forty years or so:
But especially since this is the first thaw we’ve had in a while, the rain is delightedly getting into places it hasn’t before.
I just noticed that my circuit breaker was dripping water! Did You Know, and this is obvious now that I think about it, your electrical supply has to come into your house somehow? Of course it does! How does it get there? Probably from a pole? Possibly from a buried line, if you’re posh? Either way, it’s got to enter your house from the outdoors. And it’s going to do so via (hang on, this is super obvious) A HOLE IN YOUR HOUSE. Of course it is! If electricity could phase through walls we’d have whole hosts of other problems than the ones we already do. So.
That hole in your house, like ALL holes that go to the outdoors, needs to be weather sealed, because water will get into it. And if water gets into it, water likes to run along surfaces, and so water will run along your electrical mains and into your circuit breaker box. And electricity loves water a lot, and not in ways that you want it to. So you want to keep them separate, this is just generally a good rule for life.
SO that hole where the electricity is coming in? Mine was sealed with caulk. Caulk sometimes gets old, and can shrink and crack. Mine did! So water ran in there.
I have now recaulked it but my father points out that another possibility is that water has also gotten inside the conduit somehow, and that would mean there’s a break somewhere in the conduit– the coating that goes around the outside of the bundle of wires, see, which is in this case some kind of semi-stiff plastic or rubber. I do not know how to check that to see if it’s leaking in! I will leave a plastic dish wedged under the possible leak site and check it frequently, so that I can determine whether water is still coming in.
(and if so: electrician. *money flies away emoji* We need to call one anyway.)
Odds are good it was the caulk, though, since it was thoroughly rotten and broke apart in my hand with no effort.
So like. Just if you have a house and you haven’t looked at that spot in a while, maybe make a point, the next time it’s not gross out, of going outside and looking at the holes where various things go into your house, and seeing if they all look like they’re well-sealed! Before you wind up with this or other problems. The Internet assures me that I must call an electrician immediately before corrosion builds up and my house burns down. I was going to call one anyway but I turned the mains off and dried everything out with paper towels first, and maybe we won’t be instantly killed in our sleep.
Whew! So, all my clocks are reset now… happy daylight savings end y’all.
(Your picture was not posted)
no subject
Date: 2019-03-11 07:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-11 01:09 pm (UTC)Google was no help (they were all smug little essays about how you don't panic, call an electrician, uhh not on a Sunday!) but it gave time to contemplate the issue.
I was like, "I can't shut my power off at the mains! Think of all the stuff in the house that won't come back online if I do!" but I was thinking of the gas, and pilot lights needing to be relit, and that doesn't happen with electricity, the power goes out all the time and it's no big deal. I just had to think it through, and then throw the breaker, and there was instantly no more danger.
I did find out that the heat in my house still runs even with the power off, which surprises me because the thermostat is electric. How did the furnace know to turn on? But it did, several times, on and off, while we were cleaning up. Who knows!!!