Post date: Jan 20, 2013 2:37:19 PM
I spent four and a half hours rewiring the circuits in the office Saturday afternoon when the office is closed. A major objective is to install a main circuit breaker for this building and separate the circuit for the printer from other circuits. The Xerox vendor will not honor their warranty unless we make this change. Actually, the problem is the variable voltage coming from the commercial power company. This tends to fry fluorescent tubes, electric motors (think refrigerator), and some electronics without special protection. While it is easy (but not cheap) to protect some of these, protecting all the fluorescent fixtures is not feasible.
The engineer did the heavy lifting by moving the feed wires (without turning off power to the entire complex) and I fed power to the new breaker panel, extended all the wires, fed them through plastic conduit, reconnected, tested, and labeled. I desperately need a bath now!
We had a three-hour power failure on Friday, followed by two shorter failures. When we went to start the backup generator, we discovered that the mechanics had 'borrowed' the battery, and it took a few more minutes to track down a battery and start up the generator. They are not supposed to leave the generator without the ability to start, and they got caught this time.
Will hitch a ride into town Sunday when two members go to church. Saves hassle getting from Ciudad Sandino to Managua. I found a list of bus routes in the city but it doesn't cover the suburbs, of course. My plan is to visit the Benedictine nuns who formerly ran a mission in San Nicolas, in northern Nicaragua. Of course my Spanish is not great, so I hope I can find their house.