Electricity Part 2
The next step with the electricity was to call in the professionals. I’d had a builder/electrician/plumber/gardener recommended to me, and he came round to have a look at the place. I’d always been taught to be pretty sceptical of people who claimed to do everything, but this guy was an utter godsend.
After lots of pointing and plug socket pulling out (Not-My-Cat was very unhappy, he disturbed her sleep), he found the problem! It turned out that the cables in the house were not big enough to support anything more than basic light and charging - anything else was simply too much power to put through them.
Sooooo, the whole house needed rewiring. That was a rather large financial blow, but it was an older house - these things were to be expected. And at least we knew what the problem was! They say knowledge is power, right?
So, around the builders came to rewire the house.
Plugged in their tools.
And tripped the power.
This went on for a couple of days. But no matter how much we all hoped and prayed that their tools would somehow magically work, they didn’t.
Turns out that you’re in some bizarre Catch 22 if you need to rewire your house due to lack of electrical power through your cables as you don’t have the power through the cables to use your cable-replacing tools.
So, in true Gomera style, we had to borrow power from the neighbours. It’s a good job this community is so strong! It’s also a good job that for unknown reasons my kitchen has a doorway that leads to the house next door, for easy access for running cables through. Who knew that door would come in handy?
This led to a hugely exciting development - we were able to run an extension lead onto the terrace which gave us PROPER power. If you’ve never sat on your terrace making toast and worshipping your coffee machine, you’ve never lived.
The sheer, unadulterated joy of being able to make coffee and toast AT THE SAME TIME was indescribable.
So, a couple of weeks go by, and the house is rewired. During this process they’ve also discovered it had never been earthed - glad we caught that one in time...
They replaced the fuse box with one designed this century, and looked on with bewilderment as I took photos while exclaiming in joy and FaceTiming people to show them my new fuse box. They’d also added a load of USB sockets around the house, including one on the terrace with a window - possibly the first time I’ve fallen in love with a plug socket.
I can’t tell you how good it was to get the call saying that it was done. The house was rewired! Concrete dust, washing in buckets, sub-par coffee - all had been worth it. It was finished!
We scampered home in eager anticipation of all the things we were going to do. Make coffee while toasting and vacuuming/? Why not! Shower in hot water while washing clothes and making coffee? Absolutely!
Got home.
Plugged in the coffee machine.
Picked my favourite coffee.
Aaaaand tripped the whole house.
Electricity game level 3 was about to start...
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