Say, it's getting a bit dark in here. Perhaps I should turn on some lights.
Click. Click-click. Click-click-click. Click-click-clickity-click.....click........click.
Hmm.... that's odd. Typically, when I press the switch lights go on. But not now.
None of them.
A quick spin through the house reveals fully 1/3 of the house is in the dark. Outlets are working just fine. Intuitively, I know this cannot be a circuit breaker. At least, not a single circuit breaker. It's just far too many switches. But it's all I have to go on; I make my way through the panels, checking for badness.
Nuttin'. Now I'm both physically and metaphorically in the dark.
My friend DF loves a good puzzle - there's no way he's staying out of this mystery. We wonder - all the regular voltage is working, could the problem be with the low voltage? Now, if you follow this blog, you may remember us chatting about the crazy-pants lighting in the Back to the Future house. Relays. Lots of 'em. All those switch relays are low-voltage, electromechanical devices. When they fire, there's a satisfying buzz-chunk sound from the relay panel. If there's no low voltage power, we shouldn't hear any buzz-chunk when we press the wall switches.
No buzz-chunk.
It hadn't crossed my mind previously where all that low voltage came from. But it had to be somewhere. And the somewhere should be near the relay panels. After a thoroughly fruitless search above the panels in the attic rafters (except the the insulation mess we made, that was quite fruitful) we head to the basement aided by the meager light of our flashlight apps, to try and find the step-down transformers.
The "good news" is, the relay panel in question is located in the part of the basement that is crawlspace. I can hear my father's advice from some 30 years prior to never buy a house with a crawlspace. I'm sure he's having a good laugh as I do my best Army crawl over to the area below the relay panel. And sure enough, there it is. A 24v transformer. Except.....there are no wires attached to the low voltage side.
Well, there's yer problem!
If only that were the case. We do manage to locate the other two transformers, one under each relay panel. There's a 20VA one under the kitchen panel, and a 40VA under the panel for the rear of the house. They look exactly as they should. Low voltage control wires attached to the 24v posts. As much as it chaps my posterior to admit, I think I need to call in a pro. My Scottish upbringing bristles uncomfortably. But... the baby-sitter is here, we have an evening out planned, and I'm out of ideas. Until Steph asks,
"Will the night-light in the boy's bedroom still work?"
"Of course," I say, knowing full well I'll have to go check. "See? All of their lights are on. They're on a different relay panel. The rest of the house is..."
Click. Click-click. Click-click-click. Click-click-clickity-click.....click........click.
Hmm.... that's odd. Typically, when I press the switch lights go off. But not now.
And that was when the proverbial light bulb went on. (Sorry.) You cannot turn the lights off without the low voltage either. One of the transformers was 20VA, but the other was 40VA, because it was driving two relay panels.
Sure enough the next morning, with new $14 transformer in hand, I restored lighting control to 2/3 of the house.
Talk about your Achilles heel...
Hi Andy,
ReplyDeleteRF here (DF's father). He was telling about your relay/transformer adventure. I was telling him that my grandmother (SF and later SL), had the same sort of system in her house in North Vancouver, BC, back in 1950's. I thought it was the neatest thing - just the sort of thing for a house with a wood stove for cooking, a wood fired water heater and an ice box instead of a refrigerator. Very high tech amongst all the low tech stuff.