Friday, November 20, 2015

Corral light and garage roof

A busy day.

I fixed the garage roof.  To patch the tear I used an eight foot section left over from when I roofed the garage many years ago.   If I had the time and inclination right now I would take off and replace the fascia board as the top of it is two levels making it tricky to nail the roofing to it. Why two levels?  I'm not sure.  Perhaps the boards are really meant to be used next to one another and the levels would then overlap.   Also parts of the top of the fascia is soft with rot.



Over the past three days I added a light to the barn in the corral.  Dan and Donna both told me I needed a light for the corral, especially if I have to help a cow calve in the dark.  Two times the cattle got out into the yard in the dark, once with Tammy and once with Donna.  Both times it was a challenge to count the black cattle in the dark when making sure we got them all back into the corral.

Installing the light should have been easy as it wasn't a complicated wiring job. Of course, I had problems, the last being the light wouldn't work.   Thursday morning Curtis helped me with his electrical testing equipment.  Initially the tester indicated current in all the wiring to the light.  Then did the light bulb get damaged since I tested it prior to installing the light?

I wondered about the light switch as it had three connecting screws.  Not knowing I assumed the third screw was a ground connection.  It wasn't.  It was a three-pole switch, useful when one wants two switches to control a single light.  I replaced the switch with a two-pole switch with two screws.  Also one of my hot wire twisting connections wasn't that good.  Initially it was fine but after moving the wire around when checking stuff the connection got loose - further complicating and confusing our debugging of why the light wouldn't work.

But it all works now.  The light lights up the corral very well, much more than the following photos indicate.

The upper two boxes and wire are what I added.

Mounted up high.




I also rode 40 miles on my bicycle on Thursday.

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