Electrical Work

I was raised by my father to be an electrician building homes and wiring them if this is what I chose to do in life from age 12 to 17 summers and one year during my Junior year I went on the 4-4 plan which meant 4 subjects in High School and then 4 hours working with my Dad learning the Electrical trade better. His point of view about this is:"The more trades you have the better off you will be". So the first thing I can remember doing with my Dad in Electrical work was doing a remodel somewhere in Los Angeles in a lower middle class  home built around the 1920s. The year I was 12 would be 1960 so this was the summer of 1960. He told me "Go under the house and drag this flex cable to the other end of the house. However, when I looked under this house there was only about 12 to16 inches of vertical space that varied in height so only a 5 foot 2 or under person could manage this without getting stuck. Not only that there was cat poop, black widows and rat poop built up under the house for many many years. It was really disgusting but I couldn't fail my Dad because he couldn't do this himself and it would save him a whole lot of money if I did this for him. So I grit my teeth and tied a rag around my mouth so I wouldn't breathe in anything bad and grabbed the flex cable that usually number 12 wires are pulled through in Los Angeles area (sometimes number 14 copper wires for lighting as well) (12 are usually for 110 volt plugs and other standard appliances not stoves or washers or dryers but sometimes refrigerators will be usually on number 12 wiring which is for 110. The power comes into the house at 220 by three wires then it is split into one hot and the neutral to make it 110 volt at the panel except for electric stoves who use both the hots and the neutral and some other 220 volt appliances and plugs.
So anyway, when I climbed out from under that first house I felt like I had passed some sort of initiation and my father looked at me different after that like I had chosen to become a man that day. I liked this new state of affairs at 12. I felt like I was really beginning to grow up. I seemed to pass up most of my friends that day in maturity and as long as I worked with my Dad in many ways.

I worked in electrical and contruction and Landscaping sometimes during my 20s and got a Landscaper contractors License in my state when I was around 28 or 29. I found I like owning my own business and working alongside Landscape architects. I also found I liked renting tractors and backhoes and Bobcats and working with them too. But most of all I found I liked owning my own businesses and deciding when and how and where and who I would work for the best and deciding myself when I would work and when I wouldn't. And best of all I liked working profit and loss and stopped paying myself wages in most of the businesses I owned after I was 32.

Today I'm 63 and retired. And a lot of things have changed since 1960 to 1969 when I worked for my Dad doing Electrical work all over Los Angeles County in Califfornia. The house my wife and I own on the Northern California coast needs new bathroom exhaust fans in our three bathrooms so I opened them up and removed the electric motors like my Dad and I used to. Only today I realized that I couldn't easily replace the motors or get them rewound these days like I would have in the 1960s. So I called a friend who is more up to date regarding this kind of stuff. He told me to go to Home Depot and to get exhaust bathroom fans similar to the ones I already had that were the same manufactuer and usually I could just take the guts out of the new fan and put it into the old fan housing in the ceiling. So, I looked up on Home Depot and this is the direction I'm presently going. I'll let you know if and when I am successful or not with all of this. Boy. Things sure are done differently now than in the 1960s. But in the end electrical theory is all still the same. Once you learn the basics you are going to be fine doing this kind of work as long as you are safe on a ladder. Remember that ladders and axes are the two most dangerous tools around the house. Most people really aren't very safe with either of them. Luckily my Dad taught me well using both in the 1950s and 1960s. I was splitting wood by age 9.

Mostly success! When I went to Home Depot at first I got sort of lost in the lighting section trying to find the exhaust fans. Finally I asked someone and the bathroom exhaust fans were quite a few rows away from anything to do with lights. I liked the way everything was displayed and soon found a Nutone product similar to the one in my house that had likely been installed in the 1980s or 1970s. I bought 3 of these with the idea of taking the motor fan part out of the main housing and reinstalling it in the frame already in the ceiling so I wouldn't have to reinstall the whole thing and make a real mess. This worked okay in three of the bathrooms even with the ones that had circular fluorescent bulbs combined with fans somehow. However, one of the the exhaust fans that I bought for my daughter bathroom above her shower and bath was too large. So three out of four is not bad considering it was a shot in the dark as to whether I could make it work at all. So I got lucky and saved myself a lot of money. I let my wife spot me on the ladder and hand me tools and this made things go a little smoother. The one small snag was that I tried to reinstall a fan switch that I had disabled so as not to burn up a fan motor and got shocked a couple of times and arced a little against the metal box. Finally, I got smart and used my Iphone and my wife's blackberry so I could go into the garage and she could tell me over the phone when I pulled the right breaker to turn off all lighting in the bathroom. Then she got one of the battery powered lanterns that we use when there is a power outage and I permanently installed that one lighting switch that had been arcing. I pulled the two switches to the on position and went back down to the garage and through the breaker on. Everything worked perfectly. It had been about 3 years since the fan in the master bathroom hadn't been working right and I finally had gotten tired of opening the bathroom window to clear the shower fog out of the bathroom during the ensuing time. It's great to have all the bathroom exhaust fans working right again except one. It cost around 500 dollars to purchase 4 bathroom fans and I was able to use 3 of them okay. I will still have to return one exhaust fan and get a smaller box and fan size for the remaining bathing area. However, I'm fairly pleased with the results so far.