The boat is ok.

Also, happy birthday to me.

We came home yesterday, the day after the storm. It was surreal.

There wasn't as much leftover storm debris in the roads as I expected. Quite a bit but the bigger problem was downed trees.

We talked to someone that got in earlier and she said the national guard came through and moved trees at least so you could get a car through.

Almost nobody here yet. Pretty much a ghost town but I expect people will be flowing in today.

No power and no estimate for when it comes back. The power company alert system went down too so im not getting updates.

Fortunately it is cool here. We slept fine.

The house across the canal from us had their seawall and yard collapse.

Did you have water in the house again?

Glad to hear the boat is ok. Have as good of a birthday as you're able to.

Hoping for no further damage on the house.

No. But speaking of water, we are on boil water notice for the next 3 days.

Gas is nowhere to be found.

Thanks.

We might be without power for 4 more days. Ugh.

Sooooo...................

The last few days have been challenging. We had a couple of coolers for small amounts of food but the stores ran out of ice. Gas was impossible to get until yesterday so we've been limiting trips anywhere. Home Depot is out of everything that we needed to get. Charging phones was a huge challenge but we found a neighbor a few blocks away on a whole house generator and she was nice enough to let us charge things. Fortunately the weather has been pretty nice and we've been able to get a few hours sleep but it's hard to sleep when you know how many things still need to get done. Also, we've been under a boil water notice and there was no bottled water to be found.

Then we had another friend nearby whose power came back on and he said I could come get his generator. By that time I was able to get gas. The line wasn't horrible. We got the refrigerator and chargers going, so that was a relief.

We were the only ones on our street that came back to live in our house. It's been a bit of a ghost town but activity is picking up again. Gas stations now have gas and the boil water notice has been lifted.

When we left, we turned off all the breakers. I decided to turn the main breaker back on when we got home and then turned on the breaker for the garage, tankless water heater, and AC. So, I'm taking yet another cold shower and I'm sort of jumping in and out of the water because, well, it's cold. Then all of the sudden it seemed to be getting warmer. HOT WATER!!!!!!!!!!!! I called my wife and by the time she got there I had fiddled with the controls and it was coming out lukewarm so she called me a liar. Anyway, the power did indeed come on. My wife and I hooted and hollered for an hour.

Life isn't normal by any stretch of the imagination but we both started getting back into our routines a little. My wife worked out this morning for the first time in 3 weeks and I hit the gym for a shortened workout. It was nice.

The plumbers are here replacing all the water lines. We decided to do this because the copper coming out of the slab is 50 years old and all the walls are open so we figured this was an opportunity to do what will eventually need to be done.

Still no word on my wife's car. They towed it away before we evacuated but haven't let us know anything more. In the mean time, I decided to file a claim for my truck. It seems ok now but my neighbor has a similar truck and he's having electrical issues. His adjuster said the transmission wiring harness is pretty bad so they totaled his truck. I figure mine might have a limited life now so I went ahead and called it in.

Things happen fast. The insurance company told me they are going to total it and will tow it away today. Yikes. Had to scramble to buy another truck.

Electric question for markfnw.

I opened up a receptacle to find a cluster **** of wires connected together.

The power coming in has four wires. The red wire is capped. It is aluminum.

There is a wire going on that is aluminum. No clue where it goes right now.

There is a second wire going out that is aluminum. It goes to another outlet.

There is a wire going out through the wall that is copper. It connects to at least one outside outlet, maybe two. I haven't figure that out yet. This one had to be replaced because it has turned black.

There is a wire going out to a light switch. It is copper.

It appears as if they pigtailed some of the aluminum neutral wires.

It appears as if they pigtailed some of the grounds.

It looks like they put those purple thingies on the black (hot) wires and pigtailed the copper.

The box that holds this mess also has a receptacle in it. It has a neutral from the light switch connected to it, a neutral from one of the purple thingies that is attached to the incoming wire, and a black/hot wire attached to a purple thingie that is pigtailed with several other hots.

I doubt that I could possible put all this back together the way I found it. It would be nice to simplify things. One thing I can do if it helps is replace the aluminum wire that goes to another receptacle with copper. Easy enough to get to. I don't know if I can get to the other outgoing aluminum, although as I type this it seems like it would make life much easier if I could.

I am probably not explaining this correctly but if you can decipher this mess, let me know.

Is the switch a 3 way switch? Was this outlet a switched outlet from the switch? Gotta keep that **** straight before you start taking it apart, lol! Any pics from before you disconnected anything?

LOL, that would have been great advice last week

The switch is not a 3 way switch. It goes to an outside light. It is newer work with copper.

The outlet is not a switched outlet.

I think what I might try to do is figure out where the second aluminum wire goes to and replace it with copper. If I can maybe get rid of the mix of copper and aluminum it will make it easier for me to conceptualize what the heck is happening.

Or, I'm wondering if I just add a junction box instead of having the outlet in the middle of all the mess because there is a second wire coming out of it going somewhere. It might help simplify things in my mind.

It's pretty much going to be just blacks to blacks and whites to whites as long as there's only one circuit in there. The only thing you should probably check is the wire coming from the switch because sometimes, if the light is fed from the box you're in instead of the switch box, the wire to the switch will use the white as the hot to the switch and the black as the hot from the switch, the switchleg. That way they don't have to run 2 romexes to the switchbox. As always you're welcome to call or facetime if you don't get it figured out.

Thanks. Fortunately I don't need that circuit so I can take my time.

It's really getting crazy here. The streets in all the neighborhoods around me are not very wide and people are parking everywhere on the street. You have to wind around and wait for oncoming traffic. Plus there are tow trucks, POD trucks, and dumpster trucks everywhere blocking the entire street while they load/unload.

Everyone was pretty patient at first but now people are getting really testy and impatient. People are trying to go around when you simply can't go around and they are just making the cluster worse.

Still no word from progressive on our cars. We had a delay on my wife's because progressive said the car wouldn't start (duh) so they couldn't get mileage so they couldn't finish the claim. Hmmm...... We got that sorted out, though. No word on mine yet.

Trucks are expensive now. Going to get my wife a new car today.

We got some FEMA money. It wasn't near enough to cover everything, but it was substantial. However, they are requiring we carry flood insurance. From what I can tell, they won't take the money back if you don't get insurance, but you'll never get FEMA assistance again. The problem is flood insurance is ridiculous here and it wouldn't take long before we've spent what FEMA just gave us.

Is it like Texas where they distinguish between flood and rising water insurance?

As far as I know, there's only one - flood.

GL w/ the paperwork and bureaucracy on both fronts. I guess now you know to go take pictures of vehicles' dashboards next time there's a storm coming.

I just couldn't live with that rat's nest of aluminum and copper wiring.

So......

One of the wires coming out of the mess went to a plug on an adjacent wall. It was already exposed when we tore the sheetrock out. I just replaced the aluminum with new romex. Easy peasy.

Another one of the aluminum wires went to a plug on the other side of some windows. I just pulled the sheetrock above the header and replaced that one with copper as well.

The other two wires exiting the box were both copper.

So now I have only one aluminum wire - the hot wire coming in. I'll just put those alumiconn connectors on that one and tie the rest together. I think it will work.

Got my wife a honda accord hybrid. Much cheaper than my truck. Plus the insurance from her old car covered about 2/3 of it so not horrible.

Sheetrock people are coming today to patch things up.

The plumbers finished but I'm not entirely happy with them. They were here until almost 10:00 the other night because they wanted to cram 3 days of work into 2. They were really sloppy too. We have holes in the wall and ceiling where they miscalculated where the pipe would go. They did some sort of weird convergence of pipes under the kitchen sink that won't allow me to install the new cabinets without either cutting a massive hole in the back of the cabinet, or cutting off water and cutting pipes. They didn't clean up their mess at all. I have the supervisor coming tomorrow to look at everything. I don't really want to hate on the guy that did the work too much, though. He was a nice guy and worked really hard. But he was just sloppy and did a rush job.

if you didnt pay in advance you hold the hammer.

The plumber's boss is coming today to look at everything. We'll see.

I got that electrical rat's nest fixed. Those wires are really crammed in there but everything is working.

We got thrown yet another curve ball. Every day we have to deal with something unexpected. We had the sheetrock guys scheduled for next week. We've been planning a vacation for almost a year and we've already paid for the flights and hotel so we are determined to go, hell or high water (been through both). Anyway the sheetrock guys knocked on the door and asked if they could start now. That's good that it gets done sooner but we had to scramble to move and cover stuff. Plus we have to deal with people working while we are in the house.

Then my wife and I got into a huge fight. This is just so unbelievably stressful.

Another question for Mark.

I have an oven receptacle that needs to be replaced. They wired the aluminum wires directly to it. Do they make aluminum compatible 220 receptacles or do I need to use alumiconn connectors? The wire is pretty thick and I don't think the connectors i used for the 12 gauge wire will work.