Turning up the Heat – Inside and Out

For the first time ever, I had the opportunity to work alongside my landscaper, Glenn. We had a grand time.

The first order of business was to burn some more brush. Someone had suggested I start the fire with a toilet paper roll stuffed with dryer lint. Instead, Glenn used a small cup of diesel fuel and a torch. That was effective.

The advantage (or disadvantage) of spending the day with Glenn is that, over the course of the day, I kept on coming up with odd jobs for him, like this one:

That certainly added to the brush pile. I can’t post any photos of the fire, because I’m afraid I would alarm people and get into trouble.

Glenn thought I was a hard worker, and at one point asked me if I had ever worked on a farm.  I liked that.

On a separate topic – my new thermostat.  The reason I was having trouble with the fan was because I didn’t have it wired quite correctly.  If you remember, I was trying to install it in the 15 minute window that the installation manual promised.  The manual told me to label the wires as I disconnected them from the old thermostat, but the wires were clearly colored so I didn’t bother with that step. I connected the white to W, the green to G, the red to R, and the blue to B.  Well, apparently B stands for brown.  Applying the same logic that is used in labeling circuit breakers, either Y or C stand for blue.  And I also learned that sticking a blue wire in the wrong place can blow out your transformer.  Since I didn’t have a C on my old or new thermostat, I stuck the blue wire on the Y terminal.  I also moved the red wire from R to Rc for good measure.  It seems to be working, but it took me some time to get to sleep last night.