Still Here!

Hey hey, it looks like we're slowing down a bit on the blogging (SANDI WHERE ARE YOU?). But we're not slowing down our project, in fact it seems like it's picking up speed!

I thought I'd come blog to give you a bore with technical stuff. And I will. Sandi can add her shining perspective and pictures later.

We took Sunday off for Easter and spent it at Sandi's parents place. Good thing, too, as it rained so hard there would be no hope of getting anything done in the mud. I didn't use big enough rocks, and the tarp flew off of the dirt pile and it ran like oatmeal making it un-usable for the time being. I've been spending most of my time doing ground work, and have pretty much finished the trenching. I went up the front of the property with water and low voltage lines, with a hose bib now at the north entrance. I also ran water, power and data from the house to the shed and the garden. Sandi asked me why I ran a Cat5 to the garden! Huh! Doesn't she get it? Maybe you can fill her in (because I can't answer the question....).

The biggest trenching deal so far is between our transformer and the neighbor's meter, which is currently fed overhead from our place. We cut a hole, squeezing between the mobile and the chicken coop and firewood and made a mess. I dug the hole Saturday, and Shane and I laid the conduit. We didn't think to shade the pipe down, and on Sunday the rains filled the trench and the pipes floated right up. So we had to pump out most of the water before back-filling, got the PUD inspection, and now I've mostly filled it all up. PUD will come out in a week or two or three and change the service to underground. Oh, while the hole was open I ran a water line and power to the chicken coop. Now (Wednesday) I'm working on the utility head-end, preparing to build the water connection to the house including making a permanent, frost-proof 1-1/2" fire hose bib. The low voltage conduit is also in this spot, terminating in a utility box with the other comm stuff from the street and garage. I'm looking forward to filling this big hole, probably the last thing I have to do before we return the machine. We already got a bill for the excavator, for $2000. I really don't want to spend a ton on the backhoe, as our budget number remaining was about $1600 for machine rental before the excavator.

The house is realy coming together. All of the first floor walls are up, squared and braced. The crew is taking Thursday off and will return on Friday when our next lumber drop is scheduled. That will be to start on the second floor deck. We can walk around the floor now and get a real good feel for the house; it's quite exciting!

The picture above is Hayward of Northwest Energy. He and I were building the buried, heat-fused manifold for the geothermal ground-loop.