Electrical service installed

The day started with this view over Lake Keechelus.

And then the service crew from PSE showed up.

The primary wire had been stolen out of the conduit a couple months after it was installed, back when the lot was subdivided. That's pretty insane: we learned a lot about 7.2kV primary wires today, and nothing we learned made me want to attach one to my pickup truck and try to drive away with it. That, and it's mostly of aluminum and has very little scrap value!

So the first job was to blow the water out of the conduit. That was impressive.

After the primary went in, Eliot dug out the ends of our service conduit, and the crew brought in the service wire spool to pull through it.

A Squirrel got into the transformer wiring. No really, this guy's nickname was Squirrel. On the left side is the incoming 7.2kV primary. On the right are the split phase busses of the 240V secondary output. The neutrals are on the bottom. There are two secondary conductors on each bus because we had separate services installed at the shop and the house (presently just a temporary pole).

When the crew closed up the transformer box and locked it up, they said, "okay, you have power!" and drove off to their next job. I ran with glee to the shop, grabbed a circular saw, uncoiled the cord, and then looked around ... and realized there weren't actually any outlets installed yet. Then I ran down the hill, plugged the saw into the temporary pole, and made "WHIRR WHIRR" noises with the trigger.

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Appliances and mirrors

In pursuit of being ready for final, I came up and installed the fridge and dishwasher with Jeff. We hung mirrors in the bathrooms.

It is DONE!

The final inspection was today. This guy is Levi, the county inspector, and as you can see, we passed! He only had two questions for me. One was about the energy efficiency credits and the blower door test, for which I had the compensating paperwork for the low-flow faucets already prepared. The second was asking for a smoke detector outside the bedroom; I pointed up and he saw that we already had one tucked into the alcove. And that was that! I got up at 5am to be certain I'd be here before the inspector, and I was ... by about five hours. In that time, I took another truckload of tool buckets down to the storage container, then picked up all the floor protection in the great room and vacuumed and mopped. It's glowing! Then I went back down to the storage container to get a hammer so I could glue in 32 wood plugs to cover the screws for the french doors. I fought with installing the screens, but the frames are too big! The manufacturer said "yeah we don't even make th...

Closer to final

Jeff reminded me that one of the things we'll need for final is a "blower door test" which determines how much air leaks out of the house. It's required to be under a certain level to encourage efficient use of heating energy. I got a hold of a contractor who could do the test, and Christina and I met him today. Before he arrived, I called the county to be sure I understood the rules. Along the way, I discovered that our on-demand electric water heater (which uses zero energy during times we're not there) doesn't qualify for the necessary energy "credits" required by our permit, so it looks like we'll be installing a heat pump water heater. And then, when Brian got here, he pointed out several places where we were going to have vigorous leaks, mainly the 18 places where the collar ties pass through the ceiling into the rafter cavity. He refused to take our money for a test, saying we should seal up those leaks and he'd come back later. Dang! ...

Howell Cabin

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