Buckets of money

For the last few years the breaker that protects the guest bedroom and Natali's room would randomly trip. In the past the guest bedroom was the office which was filled with computers. Nowadays there is very little plugged in.

Sometimes it would trip in the middle of the night. Other times in the middle of the day. No rhyme or reason....except maybe when it rained. We finally got around to getting it looked at.

Every morning I see commercials for Milestone Electric. They seemed honest and straight forward.

I made an appointment online. Glad I did as the service visit was $14 versus $69. The electrician was overly nice (almost annoyingly nice) and had a price sheet right away. They charge by the job, not by the hour. A one circuit troubleshooting that was easy to get to was $259. I googled how much it cost to replace a breaker and the results shows $150-$200. Close enough for me.

He ended up replacing the breaker and checking all the outlets. The problem ended up being somewhat simple.

When the house was built (by Lennar) the electrician inserted the electric wires in the outlets straight into the adapter and screwing it down versus wrapping the wires around the post and screwing them down. Because of this a few were loose. Whenever the wires expanded or contracted the wires would arc just enough to trip the breaker. Nice eh? At least I know if it happens in another room I can fix it.

A few years ago we set up a "house account". The purpose was to put money aside each month to save up for house repairs. We have repaired the A/C and fence thus far. Now the electrical system. It's nice having buckets of money to pull from. We also have a baby account....for whenever Natali needs something like a new toy, laptop or whatever.

Tax return money should be in soon. I think we are going to replace the ceiling fans in the living room and master bedroom. The other rooms have fans I installed. They don't collect dust near as much as the two that came with the house.

Second tank of gas on my new "low rolling resistance" tires resulted in 49.7 MPG. Still a 2.5 MPG improvement over the "regular" all season tires that were on it.

Subwoofer has finally been installed in my Prius. Finally got the electrical stuff figured out. The Prius is a regular car as far as stereo stuff. A little easier as the battery is in the trunk versus under the hood.

The dogs are still alive.