While we wait…

Since my “ceiling crew” was friends helping out when time permitted I was working around their schedules. So between our ceiling days I would work on putting things back together that I had taken down.

In order to drill holes through the ceiling for lights, outlets, and hoists I eventually settled on climbing up into the attic with a center punch and a hammer to mark the correct spot for the hole. I then climbed down and drilled them out with a step bit to the correct size to fit a grommet for a given wire size. Then back into the attic to fish the wires through. I couldn’t drill from above due to the proximity to trusses or other framing members.

The lights ended up being easier to mount than I thought they would be as they happened to line up with the ribs on the steel so I just had to count 5 ribs over from the center and drill a hole. I found some countersunk washers that fit framing screws perfect so they pull the lights tight up to the ceiling without trying to tear through the light fixture.

When I originally put the hoist up I followed the instructions to a T and wired up the safety stop at the top. Basically you run one of your power legs up through a normally closed micro switch. If the padded bar at the top gets pushed up by a vehicle you lifted too high pushes on the micro switch it opens the circuit and stops the lift. I had had many vehicles up on the hoist in the nearly three years I had it up to this point and nothing had ever been tall enough for that to happen so I decided to remove it so I could do something else.

Since they ship you a 14-4 cord to use for this I figured I could remove it and use a 12-3 cord in its place and be even safer. The end result of doing this is I was able to almost entirely hide the power cord while also securely holding it in place with the factory design — just repurposed.

We then rolled the 4 post lift out of the way so we could stack cars up and keep space clear for the next post!