Sunday - March 01, 2015

hallelujah

There is heat. Finally.

Hallelujah.

And I ain’t even dead. Heck, not even wounded.

Granted, it took 40 times longer than it should have, and set me back replacement parts it shouldn’t have ... like a brand new 20 amp dual pole breaker and a replacement single pole high current thermostat ... because the damn instructions were wrong.

Seriously. I’m not trying to cover up my own stupid. I’ve got more than enough of that to spread around. I can read a basic circuit diagram. But apparently I can’t trace a wire drawing and think; I just follow instructions. Whose fault is that? My bad.

The instructions were bad news. Instead of showing a photograph of the unit with arrows identifying this wire and that, or even a drawing of the thing and the wires therein, it shows an electrical circuit diagram. And shows two wire nuts. “Replace the wire nut and attach the power leads separately”, or something similar, instructions poorly translated from some heathen foreign lingo. But it still doesn’t show you where to hook up the wires.  So, I take one wire nut off, attach the white lead, put the nut back on. Take the other wire nut off, which was a battle, because some idiot used a crimp nut instead of a spin on nut. What a pain to get that off, but I managed. Now attach the black lead, put an actual wire nut back on. I have bags of them around. Turn on the power. POP! And the breaker trips. WTF? So I take everything apart, check this, check that, put it all back together again ... POP! Grrr. So I do it yet again, throw the breaker on with a stern thumb, and FRRRZZAAAP ... nice big spark, and the whole house is eerily quiet and dark. Popped the main breaker. Which is outside, 2 units over, in the electrical cabinet with everyone’s meters. Trot outside, find it, flip it. Fine. And around we went. Time after time. It was very frustrating and left me feeling really stupid. I’m good at household wiring. I wired up an entire house. I can do this. Why does it keep screwing up??

Finally, I’m rereading the instructions, in the french part, and deep in the back there’s another diagram that shows you how to hook up the juice when you’ve got two heaters next to each other on the same line. And this diagram shows where the power leads go. So I kind of stare at it, then I cover the second heater drawing with my hand, and trace the circuit around and around ... and damnation. The first diagram, the one I followed, has me hooking up power at both ends of a plain piece of wire. No load. This is what’s called a short, ladies and gentlemen. Son ov a gun. Fine. fine. super. Let’s do it the right way, m’kay? One wire “separately” to each of the wires held together under the one wire nut. In other words, split the connection and apply a power lead to each side, and carefully use a wire nut on each of the two new connections.  There. How hard was it to say that? I could even draw you a picture.

So I did. Hooked it all up just right. And turned on the breaker. And nothing happened. WTF. Get out the meter ... I have 24 volts on the wires coming out of the wall. Not 240. 24. Whhhaaaaattt???

Unscrew the thermostat, check it’s leads. 24 volts. Unscrew the panel cover, check the breaker. 120 volts on this one to common. And on the other side ... nothing. Nothing? Nope, zero. Damn. I fried the thing. Ok. Rightee-o. Let’s check the thermostat. Hmm, flows current in the on position. Good. Turn the knob down to zero ... flows current in the off position too. Shit. Looks like I fried the thermi too. Well, I’m going near a Home Depot, so I’ll get new parts. They had the breaker. They didn’t have the single pole thermostat. So when I was done with my cleaning and got home ... we’re having our raging weekend snow storm today, instead of yesterday (big snow every weekend since mid-January. This is at least the 4th or 5th time). Steal the thermostat from the bathroom. That room can live without heat for a couple days. Hook it up. Hook up the new breaker. Double check the wires. Pray quickly. Throw the switch ... and nothing blew. Phew. Thank you baby Jesus. Now let’s check the heater ... and it’s getting warm. Happy dance! Woo hoo, who’s your daddy?? Yeah baby!!

Granted, I still have to screw the unit to the wall. And I have to properly run the wires through the knockout hole in the back. And I guess it’s going to smell like new electronics getting hot for the first time for a few days. Small potatoes. I have heat in the bedroom again, so I’m camping happy.

Time for lunch, a shower, and maybe a nice warm nap.

There is heat. Finally.

And now I’m going “Hey that’s right, one of the reviewers said the instructions were messed up. I guess they were right!” And I found a slightly updated digital version of them online, which says “leave the crimp nut alone” but STILL doesn’t show how the power lines get attached. Duh.

What they said



What they meant

Posted by Drew458     on 03/01/2015 at 02:48 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
• Comments (9) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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