Electricity, E-Lec-Tricity!

As the bathroom demolition progressed we uncovered some of the very special wiring that had been put in place by former owners. I'm going to continue to hope that it was the former owners who did this, because if it was an electrician, he needs some remedial electrical instruction. Perhaps starting with this.

One of the main (haha.. .main!.. .electrical pun! I rock.)
Uh oh. Mental tangent. Lost train of thought. Where was I?

Right.. so one of the main (snicker) issues we faced with the demolition was the fact that there was a small fuse panel smack in the middle of one of the walls that we wanted to remove. [shakes an angry fist at the fuse panel]

Once the layers of drywall, panelling, and plywood were peeled back we could see the extent of the trouble we faced.

Spaghetti!
[Note fuse panel that needs to move.]

Same wall, viewed from the other side.
Note the red line that's heading towards the outer wall with the window. See how it runs right across the copper pipes for the shower? Very safe, oh, yes. (Oh, NO!)
That's the line that supplies power to Slanty, the bunky.

Easy fix, though, right? Just run a new wire from the bunky to the re-located fuse box. Except the old wire was spliced, twice, underground, run through an octagon box at the near the floor of the bunky, and then stapled up the bunky wall (apparently the one and only time they bothered with staples.) Eric fought with this one chunk of electrical wire for an entire day. He had to dig up the length of PVC they used as a conduit under the grass, He had to rip apart the wall in the bunky to get at the staples, He had to bore a hole through the outside wall of the cottage, He had to unplug the nozzle for the can of spray foam.

He had to swear. A lot. He was not a happy builder.

Here's a photo of the line once he managed to extricate it from the PVC.  Our working theory is that they ran over the red wire with the lawn mower. Spliced it together again with a 2-ft section of white wire, and buried it in the PVC for extra protection. See how they joined the wires with electrical tape? Awesome. When the wire got to the octagon box under the bunky where it was spliced again, they didn't even bother to connect the ground wires. Who needs electrical ground anyway?

Earth Ground Is For WIMPS!
I might need a t-shirt with this on it.

Here's a close up of another similar cable splice, this one a 6" section leading to a light fixture. At least they remembered to join the ground wires for this one. Kinda. And who needs murettes? They're over-rated.

Here's the box for the fixture. Confidence inspiring, no?

If this doesn't make your stomach all wambly, you have nerves of steel, my friend. It makes me want to rip apart all the other walls in the cottage to identify and mend all the electrical atrocities.

At least I know the newly relocated fuse panel is well installed. It's been moved out of the bathroom, well away from any water sources.

Oh, and if you're from the building permits office, this blog is a work of fiction and these are all staged photos, not depicting an actual job. Ahaha. Yes.