A Day In The Life Of An Electrician - Home Town Service Call.

Well the job today was only a hop, skip, and a few jumps down the road.  The homeowners - folks I've known forever.

Incidentally, I'm also the guy who winds up working on the air conditioning of the residence - I'm a multi faceted knockabout redneck.

I'm not at this point what one would consider a "real electrician."  I only have an apprentice license, but as I'm absolutely deadly when it comes to passing written exams, I think I ought to just go ahead and get a book to study to become a licensed Journeyman electrician.  I do not flunk tests that I've studied for - I knock the bottom out of them, and then feel obliged to - when everyone else is still trying to figure something out, use the backsides to write essays about whatever the subject is.

Okay - I bragged a tiny bit, but not much.  I didn't exaggerate.

Anyway, we were talking about ...oh wait, "I" was the one talking via typing, and I tend to just wander.

I live in Kaufman, Texas; and I've spent most of my life here.  I know a ton of people, and if I don't know someone, or one of their relatives, then they must be new in town.

Basically, the largest part of the day's job was moving a light fixture.  The light outside near the customer's front door was to be replaced, and the fixture replacement was to go on another wall entirely, and on the other side of the front door - the home was brick.  So you can see, as light fixtures always mount inside a box of some kind, that some major chiseling was going to need to be done, and besides that, after taking down the old light fixture - there would be a box embedded in bricks and wires showing....something had to be done about that too.

As an hvac guy - crawling around someone's attic is just a normal thing.  So of course I had to crawl in the customer's attic, figure out which bit of Romex wire went to the front door light fixture, find the breaker and disconnect power, then cut the wiring in the attic, jumper to new wiring inside a junction box which needed securing to the rafters, and then running the new wire for the new fixture down a hole where a brick had been chiseled out of the outer wall.

That whole deal went WAY more smoothly than anyone has a right to expect for it to.

No, we weren't beating on the wall with a cold chisel and a hammer - we drilled through the brick with a hammer drill.





Following the drilling into some very quality brick, there was the cold chiseling to be done, and also chiseling out the old metal box that the old fixture we removed was mounted to.  I did that by hand with a large and ancient flat blade and a claw hammer - not a big deal.

The homeowner was going to cut some brick and get some mortar to fill the unsightly hole - electricians aren't really expected to ever have that sort of stuff around, but I'd have sure done that job too were I asked.

I'm becoming all the more "handy" as I age.  Not exactly what I'd wanted to make of myself, but there is no real obsolescence or lack of need for persons with labor skills, in fact - it is the more complex sort of vocations that get to become fizzle and bust fads.

I wish I were a licensed plumber as well as a EPA technician type "Universal," and an apprentice electrician. Libertarian candidate for POTUS, Gary Johnson became a millionaire ...as a handyman, who created and built all by his self (fuck Obama!) - a multi million dollar per year business.

Obama studied Constitutional Law - so far as I can tell, he did so entirely to subvert it.  I hope he's gone from office in a short while, and he can go directly to hell afterwards so far as I'm concerned.

Oh dear me!  I seemed to digress!

So anyway, we got lucky - behind the wall from where the bricks were hammer drilled out and then chiseled out for the new metal box to be installed so the new front door light fixture could THEN be installed - there was some bit of dead space, and by scooping away blown in insulation from the rafters, I was able to find that dead space, and fish down my new number fourteen sized Romex cable...no holes needed drilling in the attic.  Oh praise heaven!

I had to shim in some bits of wood to tighten up the metal box in the space we'd chiseled and hammer drilled out of the wall - to secure it.  All else on the light fixture installation was done with a simple" Klein ten in one," my crafty hands, and a knife.