Ad Astra Observatory

Yeah, so I flunked the first inspection. Compliments on the neatness of the work, no nail plates needed, and a Handy Correction List(tm) that explained what I needed to pass next time.

Step one was to figure out what I needed in order to fix the problem. Adding the GFCI outlets revealed the limitation of shared-Neutral. It all has to be on one breaker. You can use it to sort-of load share across a breaker, with two separate hots. But that’s tricky, if you don’t understand what you’re doing, and anyway, I needed two breakers, because of the way I brought in the feed from the house. Add a second GFCI to the same circuit, and Odd Behavior Results.

I found a good place to separate utility and lights from telescope operations (oh, they don’t get names yet, just realized what I did there), and one more trip to HD for light bulbs and a few more outlet fixtures.

I needed to find the first outlet after the black wire goes upstairs. All after that is white outlets, and the overhead lighting. White GFCI goes there. Pull new 12-2 (only needed one extra hole, which will get an Epic Name at some point, but), wirenut off the black feed line, the new line goes to the utility breaker, and Bob’s your uncle, white side is working. I left the grounds connected. It Seemed the Proper Way.

The previous utility feed wire got wirenutted in the panel (I will talk with the inspector about what to do — I wirenutted off the other end of this wire, in the Black GFCI box).

I got halfway through rewiring all of the black outlets as red (if you are going to use a naming scheme, stick to it), when I realized that I *could* share Neutral in this area, if I tied in the Feed. So, in the Black GFCI box, I wirenutted the Load side black and red Hots together. Feed Hot (red) and Feed Neutral to upper terminals, red pigtail to the wirenut, white to the Load N.

So there are still two colors on the ops side, not sure how to deploy all that, yet, but it might be interesting.

I still had to re-wire 12 outlets today, both 3-gang, two 2-gang, and 2 GFCI, plus the wirenutting at both ends of the now dead wires. (one at the panel, one in the chasm). Lots of testing, I feel quite satisfied with the result. No photos — I’ll get to that, later. This was “doing the exact same thing, but in a completely different way”.

But I believe that I have completed the installations per the corrections list.

What say ye, inspector?