| Back O' The Page Stories, April 2009
By Scott CoverdaleThere is a family that we know of living in a very old adobe house in South Tucson. The house wiring was pretty old, too, and the whole house was running on two circuits. When the granddaughter of the homeowner gave birth to her third child, they put a space heater in her bedroom for the comfort of the mother and child. Predictably, the overloaded circuit blew a fuse, then another one, and a third. The father went to Naughton's for some electrical advice, and they sold him a thirty amp fuse to replace that silly old twenty amp fuse. They didn't sell him any AWG 10 wire to go with that fuse, so the next day the house caught on fire. Just bad luck, I guess. Fortunately, people were home, and managed to put a garden hose to work on the blaze, with some help from the fire department. The fire department, as they are wont to do, also put lots of big holes in the ceiling of the house, to make sure that no fire was lingering amid the rafters. The City of South Tucson came the next day to declare the house uninhabitable. It was pretty messed up. The bathroom was gutted and the roof burned through. We got a request from Pima Council on Aging to see if we could help with the electrical system. Since the family really didn't have anywhere to go, they ran some extension cords from a neighbor's house and made do. There are considerable extended family resources available, but nobody wanted to tackle the electrical service entrance. Since Margaret is of Great Electrical Experience, she drew the job and hung a new 200 amp service entrance, which will accommodate way more than two circuits. Her work passed inspection first round, as usual, and the family has electricity to carry on with their living there as well as the family-powered rehabilitation job. I have offered to put in some additional funding for materials if the project runs aground.
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