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Let there be light
comments (0) December 30th, 2008 in Blogs
Kevin Ireton, editor-at-large
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My wife and I bought our house—a 200-year-old story-and-a-half Cape—in the summer of 1989. We moved in and immediately gutted the place. We slept upstairs under exposed rafters and powered our bedside lights and alarm clocks with extension cords. Eventually, we insulated the roof. But other than that, the space pretty much went unimproved while I worked on every other part of the house, including a couple of additions.
For several years now, I have been gradually finishing that space (a new bedroom), but as recently as last Sunday, the only electric light in the room was still run off an extension cord. That changed Sunday afternoon when I finally pulled the cover off the electrical panel and hooked up the two circuits that feed the new office space and the bedroom upstairs. I had been putting off this task because working in an electrical panel is not my favorite thing. Plus, my 200-amp panel was full, so I needed to rearrange some stuff to make room for the new circuits.
The hardest part about working in an electrical panel—assuming you have the sense to shut off the main breaker—is getting enough light to see what you’re doing. I have an LED headlamp, but I didn’t think it would be bright enough by itself.
After pondering the dilemma for a minute, I remembered a tip that we ran years ago in the “Tips & Techniques” column. We called it “The Cobra Light,” and it featured a scrap of Romex wire coiled like a snake. The end that stuck up in the air (like a cobra’s head) was wrapped around a flashlight. Some time after we published that tip, Black & Decker introduced a new product called the Snake Light. I’m sure it was just a coincidence.
My variation on the cobra light was to screw one end of a Romex scrap into the bottom of a floor joist (a beam really) and wrap the loose end around an LED penlight flashlight. I could then point the thing wherever I wanted. It worked great, and I got the new circuits fired up in about a half hour.
When I was done, I raced upstairs and spent five minutes watching the light turn on and off as I flipped the switch. Later that night and again the next day, I did the same thing. You really can’t imagine the joy of such a simple act unless you’ve lived without it for an impossibly long time.
posted in: Blogs, safety, electrical
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About this blog
As the editor of Fine Homebuilding, I spend my weekdays trying to produce a magazine that will satisfy 300,000 of the most demanding builders, both professional and amateur. As the owner of a 200-year old Cape in Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills, I spend weekends working on my house.
Each activity invariably informs, and complicates, the other. In this blog, I’ll offer observations from both worlds -- publishing and building -- with the hope of providing some useful or at least entertaining insights.
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