Again, this week’s principal focus has been working on the man shed but I have made a lot less progress than I would have liked. My desire to have it totally complete and stocked by mid-Feb (middle of next week) is unlikely to be met. However, I am very close to finishing on the inside so I won’t share any photos this week but hold off until next Sunday when it should all be done.
This blog will therefore be pretty short.
The reason I haven’t made the progress I wanted has been very frustrating. Last week’s blog, foolishly titled ‘Wired’ said that I had completed the wiring and had taken a bit longer on it to get it right. This allowed me to start hiding all the wires behind the lambris on the ceiling and OSB boards on the walls.
Then I wired the switch to turn on the lights (LED tubes) and – nothing! My big ‘Ta-Dah!’ moment was more of a ‘Ta-D’Oh!’
Knowing how careful I had been putting the wires up, I hadn’t tested the circuits before hiding all the wires away. Knowing too that all the connections were good I was completely stumped as to what could be the problem so I called on a friend who had recently re-wired his house and, while no sparky himself, knows a lot more about it than I did. And he too was, initially, baffled.
All the readings from his voltmeter showed that the circuits were good and there was power getting to the switches and the lights, albeit just below 220 volts, but they didn’t want to work.
After a few hours, and some trial and error with random bits of wire, a solution was found which was to wire the lights in parallel rather than series. Why this is the case I still don’t completely understand but it worked. What it did mean was that I had to remove about half of the lambris from the ceiling and some of the internal cladding so that I could change the wiring – an additional day and a half worth of work to remove, amend and replace.
Now all done so I have been able to progress with the remainder of the cladding which I will show next week.
During the week we also received some new collars for Mouse so that we could attach the magnet which acts as the key to her new cat flap. Mouse had got used to walking through the hole in the door before I installed the flap and then through the fitted flap as we had taped the door open. However, despite moving her food and bed into the shed, she was initially very slow to experiment with the flap once we had closed the ‘door’.
Thankfully, eventually, her curiosity, or possibly hunger, got the better of her and she has started to use the flap to get in and out so she has a nice warm, dry house safe from other cats – and especially her mother.
Photos next week – promise – and the shed should be finished and ready to stock!