Right now I am dealing with a leaky pool, a Japanese beetle infestation and getting shocked by my stainless steel countertop. Thomas is in Munich to pick up our new car and help out his parents.
The leaky pool is annoying but we already emailed the pool company and they told us to wait until the water level stops dropping and then they come and investigate. They think its the seams and they just need to be recaulked, no big deal except that I now can’t really swim any more just sit in the shallow end. I really need one of those little floats for drinks and snacks.
For the Japanese beetles I bought a pheromone trap and when I put it up it was like a scene out of Hitchcocks “The Birds” except mine was called “The Beetles”. There were hundred flying in from all angles and the humming was deafening. I hung the trap and ran back in the house. Within 30 min the bag was full and I needed to replace it. The second one took 2 hours to fill and now my garden has a nice layer of dead beetles. They are supposed to be good compost.
The electric shocks from the countertop required some detective work. I had gotten shocked when I cleaned the counter and Thomas when he emptied the dishwasher but most of the time we didn’t get shocked so initially we didn’t pay too much attention to it. After nearly dropping a bottle of olive oil I got the voltage tester and heaven forbid, there are ~100 volt between the oven wall (stainless steel) and the stainless steel countertop and the same between the metal part of the dishwasher and the countertop. I am no electrician but I am fairly sure that is not how it’s supposed to be.
Luckily, I have a friend with a masters degree in electrical engineering and we worked through different scenarios. His suspicion was that it was one of the appliances he had me turn off the electricity and then pull the plugs for the microwave and dishwasher which were partially covered by the cabinet. So I took out a saw and very carefully cut off part of the back board around the outlets. I am so glad we have all our power tools with us, not sure what we would do without them. When I unplugged the appliances the power on the countertop was gone, so that was good but not really a solution and the chances that both appliances are causing problems seemed odd. I send a message to an electrician but he said he can’t come until next week. I left the fuse off and went to bed. I was exhausted vom going up and down the stairs (17 steps each way) to turn the fuse on and off, and on and off, and on and off… and also sanding the ceiling in the guest bedroom.
This morning my friend had me do some tests on the outlet and it behaved different from the other outlets so I took it apart. It was a mess of different colored wires. Light blue, dark blue, black, gray, brown, and yellow/green. My friend words were “OMG that does not look right”, which was not very encouraging.
Luckily we had bought an outlet for the basement so I decided to install that, I am nothing if not adventurous and I had faith in my friend to explain the process to me. I really should have paid more attention in school when we discussed electricity. To make a long story short, it turned out the only the black wire has power, the dark blue is the neutral and one of the green/yellow wires is the ground. The other wires are for other outlets and just needed to be screwed into the back of the new outlet which was no easy task because the wires were pretty thick and the holes pretty small after a few tries I managed. I turned the fuse back on and then came the moment of truth, and hallelujah, no more power between the oven wall and the countertop. I was very proud of myself until I tested the dishwasher to countertop connection and 🤬 there is still electricity flowing. So I will just be careful when I load and empty the dishwasher and not touch the countertop and if I forget I get a “shocking” reminder. It was a long and painful process but I feel confident now that I can replace at least some of the other outlets myself without the need of an electrician. We have all kinds of outlets in the house, some with 2 holes, some with 3, some with 5 and there is a myriad of plugs in the home improvement store to convert one in the other, so it seems to be a common problem in Italian houses.
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