Hi!
So this is a little followup to the pictures I posted in February in regards to the electrical work. Since there is not much interest in this thread anymore, I will put it to rest after this post.
This posting is solely meant to give a little advice in regards to old electrical installations if someone should stumble over this thread when doing some research.
So after my work from February I was pretty happy that I had eliminated the main problem of the backyards electrical circuit: current on ground wire. I also took it as an opportunity to re-wire/install everything else in connection with it. So needless to say after a week's work - all in all - I thought it was all good to go and I would not have to touch any of it again anytime soon.
Turns out I was wrong as only a couple of weeks later the breaker for this circuit kept tripping. Sometimes immediately, sometimes only after minutes or even hours.
Since I re-wired everything myself I knew this had to be a problem with the only cable I couldn't replace in the process because doing that would have either required major demolition work or pulling a brand new brand cable through the entire basement right into the backyard. The latter would have been an option but after having finished the basement some time ago, I didn't want to start all over by installing a temporary-looking solution.
I decided to re-open the spot where old and new cable connect and it wasn't long after that I found the culprit. My initial thoughts were to closely inspect and then decide wether to give it another try or go with pulling another cable. After finding the culprit:
(Please disregard the shrink tube, that was just an experiment - after.)
You can see that one of the wires was broken, this probably happened during dismantling (lead...) of the old, stubborn cable and another one of the wires also had defective insulation which lead to a lot of sparks - you can see the residue of that.
I decided to give this another shot with the existing cable. So I cut and dismantled the cable once anew and made a connection. This time I used special connector sleeves filled with insulating, non-conductive gel made by a company called Cellpack. I'm using the Easycell 3 V model.
So first come the preparations, you need to connect the replacement cable to the connectors - I additionally decided I would use shrinking tube on bot ends where it connects to the old cables - thats what my trusty Snap-On butane soldering iron is for.
Connecting.
Shrinking.
Adding the sleeve.
It may be called easy, but it actually isn't. You're not supposed to cut the sided where the cables go in/out you just have to press down, hard. Really hard. I ended up using to pieces of scrap wood and screw clamps - that worked like a charm.
Finished.
--
Just for fun, 3 more pictures from another "culprit".
You gotta love quality screws.... [eek] [scared] [blink] [big grin] [big grin] [big grin]
Like I said - gonna leave it at that.
Kind regards,
Oliver
