Rambling Rhodes

It's electric

I don't know much about electricity. I have a general understanding that, when I flip a lightswitch, I encourage a flow of particles, called electrons--or, as I like to call them, "magical sparky things"--through copper wires in a loop referred to as a circuit--or, as I like to call it, "an electricity lasso." That's generally the extent of my electrical knowledge.

Oh, I also know it hurts to get shocked, and electrical burns can leave marks ranging from a dark smudge on the skin to a tiny hole through the finger that hurts more than you'd think it should.

Considering I view electricity more as a dangerous mystery than a life-simplifying commodity, I tend to shy away from actually working around the magical sparky things whenever possible.

The problem with my house, unfortunately, is it was constructed back in the days when people were just discovering how many new and wonderful things could make use of electricty, such as televisions. As a result, the "fuse box" down in the basement is more complex than the NASA flight control rooms of the late 1960s.

For example, there's a standard-issue fuse box that's responsible for such things as lights and electrical sockets, but then there's an add-on box responsible for the central air conditioning unit--complete with black marker text on a switch that reads "Summer: ON; Winter: OFF." There's also a strange box I call "the ticker," which basically "ticks," like a clock, only really fast, like a bomb that's late for work. There's three other, separate, boxes which I honestly can't discern their purpose, although I have no doubt they're probably very important, as per my rule that, "anything responsible for regulating electricity is probably very important."

The thing is, even though I know the electrical configuration in my house is antiquated, to say the least, I've lacked the financial means to actually update my electrical service until only recently. So, up to this point, every time I walked by the fuse box configuration, I did so with a certain amount of awe, and on occasion smeered goat blood above it to ward off evil spirits.

Well, after about three years of intensive financial saving, I've managed to accrue what I believe is enough to have a professional "magical sparky thing" worker come to my humble abode and dispose of the complex fuse box configuration and install a newfangled "breaker box" solution, complete with updated electrical service to accommodate the rapidly evolving world of technological gadgetry.

What I'm learning, in my search for a good (and reasonably-priced) electrician, is "older is better," meaning there seems to be a direct correlation when it comes to the estimated price for updating my electrical service and the perceived age of the electrician on the other end of the line.

For example, one of the electrical outfits I contacted routed me to a young-sounding individual who cited a bunch of considerations before calculating the cost would be somewhere over $3,000. This left me sufficiently shocked, until I called another electrician, named Don, who sounded much older and said the project should come in "maybe around $1,000 or thereabouts."

You don't hear "thereabouts" bandied about much in conversation nowadays, so I felt compelled to like Don immensely, and not just because his estimate came in $2,000 below his competition.

I'm still hunting for the best electrical estimate for my eventual upgrade, but I'm shooting for a 124 year-old electrician with a name like Prosper Goodsoul. That guy would upgrade my fuse box for the price of a warm smile and a homemade brownie, I reckon.

Posted by Ryan at May 15, 2007 10:50 AM | TrackBack