There is Beauty Here

Over the past few days, we've had Aventures in Borked Electrical Systems.

It started last Friday night with something shorting and making the lights blink on and off, rapidly. I could hear the furnace blower trying to start, so I went into the hall and pushed the thermostat all the way down. The blower started, but there was no heat. It behaved itself the rest of the weekend.

Come Monday, Rico came out and found out the main breaker where the electrical comes in was damaged and needed to be replaced. That meant contacting the electrical company and getting the tether ring on the meter unlocked, so he could remove it, and turn off the electric while replacing the breaker. That took place on Tuesday, and we thought things were fine.

Then more shenanigans happened Wednesday morning. Not three hours after I laid down, Michael was waking me up and telling me about things like power surges and big "pops". I got up, and I could smell electrical burning in the hallway. I immediately went outside and turned the main breaker off, then called Rico.

Rico, Alfons and others spent pretty much the entire day rebuilding the circuit breaker box, replacing the jumper between the halves of this house, and other bits and pieces.

We had electrical casualties. The LED on the stove is out. The fuse is blown on the microwave, and on my main surge suppress strip. My alarm clock is fried, and so is my speaker system, which obviously took a hit before the suppressor's fuse blew. Our router is dead.

Thank all the gods that things like the computers were protected by surge suppression or we'd really be hurting units.

The park is talking about reimbursing us for things like the microwave, provided they can't just replace a fuse. Turns out the previous owners of this house dicked around with the electrical system, adding extra wires and whatnot, and obviously did not have a professional electrician do the work. Every breaker in the box had been loose and therefore weren't functioning as they should. Of course, none of us had any idea of this till the electric was actually used - and freaked out.

I'm on headphones for now till I can afford to replace the subwoofer, which is the heart of my sound system. I found a couple of them on Ebay so maybe next month my Solstice present will be a used subwoofer haha. I also found some listings for the entire speaker system itself, at a much lower price than retail, so it shouldn't be hard to replace, even if the subwoofer I found gets sold.

I am very glad I am renting this house - that makes the park liable for any damages done by the faulty electrical system.

UPDATE: A few hours after writing this entry, the lights went out AGAIN. And again there were surges, so we had to throw the main breaker. Rico came out and verified that there were surges. He messed around with things and what happened? The outdoor light in front, which hasn't worked since we moved in, decided to come on. When I tried to turn it off, there were sparks and surges.

He took the fixture down and discovered it was a DIY job and what had they done? They'd screwed both wires TO the mounting plate. He removed it completely, then had to do a minor repair to the main ground coming in, and now things are fine.

Hopefully that's the worst of it. I'm still unplugging my computer when I go to bed, just in case.

He brought the dead surge strip back to show us the damage done. From the looks of it, the surge overwhelmed it and that's the "pop" Michael heard. I think the plug for my subwoofer was nearest to the damage; that would explain how it got hit before anything else did. The wires inside were burnt to a crisp up to where they hooked into the series of sockets.

Makes me wonder if that generated significantly higher electric bills because we were pulling in extra power that was simply being wasted due to the short.

I have this story posted in law_questions under the pseudonym of bumfuddled, so that various trolls don't find it and use our misfortune to make things worse.

You can also find a post in nebris' journal here. You will need to be on his flist to see it.

Here is what the situation is:

I moved to California in late 2006. I had a very hard time finding a mortgage due to being a newcomer and having debts that I had just freshly paid off. It didn't seem to matter that I had just paid off a mortgage in good standing.

Being desperate, I was open to anything, and our realtor offered us a deal involving a mobile home with a non-traditional contract where we would pay 12% interest on the balance owed, with the agreement that we would pay off the balance with a mortgage a year hence. Well, a year went by, the economy fell apart, and we couldn't get that mortgage. The company kept accepting our checks.

This was turning into a contract without end and we'd already paid them over $50,000. We sought to renegotiate but we had a very hard time getting a hold of anyone at this office. Finally, to get their attention, we sent them a certified letter stating that we were cutting the payment in roughly half and that my roommate would act as my designated representative (I'm poor, female. He's poor but male. You get the picture). They accepted the reduced payment, a few weeks went by, then my roommate got a call from the president of the company we had this agreement with. He was very uncooperative, and eventually hung up, claiming that he has to talk to his associates. We never heard back from him. Also, the man that we had the original agreement with (who, oddly enough, we never met) was no longer with the company.

Since cutting the payment got his attention the first time, we cut it by another $100. This time, we got a HANDWRITTEN NOTE with the check, informing us that the payment was short $100 (meaning that he agreed, by omission, to the lower payment, making the prior contract null and void) and that we were to stop sending the checks to the company, and start sending them to a strange woman he named in the letter.

It's quite obvious to us that the company is on the verge of bankruptcy and this man is attempting to hide his assets. The problem is, we're not exactly certain what to do about this situation. Do we simply stop paying him and force him to either surrender the debt or sue us for the balance, or what? We called Legal Aide for our county and they claim they cannot help us.

It's looking more and more like we're going to have to hire a lawyer to clear this up; problem is, we're both poor as dirt as you, my friends, are more than aware. If you can help us figure out where to get help for this, I'd be appreciative.

I've got emails dropped to the tax assessor for the county regarding the deed and finding out the history of ownership of this house (basically a self-done title search). I have also dropped an email to the Predatory Lending office of the FHA. I haven't heard anything back yet. I've also posted to findlaw.com.

I am trying to recover from a major infection involving teeth (again) and this is just making things worse. I might end up on a month's worth of antibiotics yet again thanks to this jackass.