Jan 6: Electrical Trouble

I didn’t even mention that on Sunday night (Jan 4) we had some wierd electrical issue. During the night, just after I headed to bed, I noticed the christmas lights flashing. That’s odd I thought, considering I had purchased the only non-flashing Christmas string in all of La Vega! The thought did cross my mind that perhaps someone tried to “fix” my lights by adding a couple flashers, but not this time. In retrospect I should have clued in to how bad the electricity was since these particular lights were connected through an electrical inverter and regulated by a pack of 8 large batteries and yet they were still flashing very noticeably.
Monday morning I had discovered a number of our lights were damaged, all the ones that we had left on during the night. In all I replaced three bulbs, suprised that the power could be so bad to destroy a florescent bulb. Little did I know. Otherwise everything else seemed to be  working fine.

Today I discover what we didn’t realize yesterday. That there were a couple of hidden problems. Our inverter power output was fine, but we had no way of knowing that it wasn’t charging the batteries, only discharging. And how were we to know the fridge was damaged, since the interior light was still working and it held some cold? We also realized now that the Internet connection was probably down for the same reason.

In all, the electricity damaged the power inverter, two fridges, many bulbs, and a power bar. Fortunately the power bar had protected the Internet equipment by sacrificing itself. Unfortunately once the inverter batteries were empty the number of available internet hours dropped to almost none (most our power seems to come at night, especially on weekdays). The two fridges (same model, conincidentally) are being investigated by a friend of our neighbors, since the warranty won’t cover electrical power damage. I’m not sure how our neighbors will cover the cost of repairs since they already live on such a tight budget.

All I can say is I’m extremely thankful that my laptop wasn’t damaged as it was plugged in for the nightly charge during the trouble.

Running an Ethernet Cable - No More Wireless!

Chess Match

House Cleaning

Local Home - One of the stronger in the really poor section

Dinner with Neighbors