The next challenge was rearranging appliances so that I had a dedicated (the 'scope + pump + circulator draws 1500 watts, ~12.5 amps) circuit to plug into.  If you live in a modern (built after the Tesla/Westinghouse polyphase system became common) house, this might not seem like much of a challenge.  This house, however, was built before the AC motor was a gleam in Nikola's eye.  There are remnants of knob and bail wiring (no longer in use), black iron conduit with asphalt impregnated cotton and gutta-percha insulated wiring (scary, if you try to bend it the insulation turns to dust and falls off), galvanized steel conduit with rubber insulated wiring (also scary, so old it's almost as brittle as the GP), aluminum conduit with vinyl insulated wiring and Romex wiring (gee, I wonder if there is any market for a History of Residential Wiring Museum?).  Don't believe me?  Here are a couple of pics.

No, that's not a gas pipe at top.

There are also 8(!) fuse boxes (four of them bypassed) feeding a grand total of ten, 120 volt, 15 amp circuits (for three apartments!) and two 220 volt circuits (clothes dryer and range).  Here is a pic showing seven of the boxes (the eighth is mounted on the chimney, next to the furnace and is one of the bypassed).

After a week of circuit tracing I was amused to find that three of those 15 amp circuits were each connected to more than 30 amps of lighting and appliances (would have been more like 40 amps last year, but we switched to compact fluorescent bulbs).  A fourth circuit appears to be dedicated to the furnace, a fifth to the outside security lighting and an attic ventilation fan (a bit of a waste there, since the switch to CF bulbs, that circuit is only carrying about 4.5 amps), a sixth to a clothes washer, seventh to the first floor microwave oven, eighth to a first floor refrigerator and ninth to the second floor refrigerator.

Curiously, the tenth circuit, originating in the second floor fuse box, was connected to two outlets on the second floor (air conditioner and lamp) and one outlet in the basement (a dehumidifier and 4' fluorescent lamp, 13 amps all together).  By switching the 2nd floor AC onto the same circuit as the 2nd floor refrigerator (13.1 amps total, yes, I know, if both compressors start at the same time the fuse will blow), the dehumidifier onto the 1st floor refrigerator circuit (which also had an outlet in the basement, 12 amps total) and the 4' lamp to the washing machine circuit (13 amps), I wound up with a basement outlet that could supply 14.7 amps (the other 0.3 amps go to the CF lamp in the second floor apartment).

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