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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The trim finishing journey begins

The last time we installed wood trim (almost two years ago!), we sanded and cut the material inside the cabin (it was winter) and installed it unfinished. Finishing it meant taping everything off and applying three coats of finish in place. Removing the masking was frustrating (the finish glued it to the wall in places), and in other places the finish still got where it didn't belong. Now the cabin is full of nice, finished floors, cabinets, and counters. It's not a shop. So this time, I'm sanding and pre-finishing all the boards outdoors. Thankfully, there's still pretty nice weather; that black tarp garage heats up pretty well when the sun's out. Today I got the first batch of wood sanded and a coat of finish applied. Christina installed eight receptacles in the kitchen and great room. My mom came up to enjoy the warm ambiance of the not-yet-active wood stove.

Uncrating the wood stove

I drove up to the cabin today to meet a tree contractor. Since I was up there anyway, I took care of some other business. I got the wood stove out and ready to install on Monday. I vacuumed up the tiny particles of styrofoam packaging material from last year's roofing panels that would have been much easier to clean up last year. I put the bathroom outlet back into its adjusted place above the backsplash. I corrected my installation of the heat pump wiring with a pair of reducing washers. Now it's really done. I replaced the emergency brake battery system in the flatbed trailer. I bucked a bunch of old logs into rounds for firewood.

Odds and ends

I made progress on a bunch of little things today. I painted a fencepost in 12" segments and pounded it in at the property line, where the outdoor camera can see it. Now we can measure the snow accumulation. I worked on finishing up almost-complete receptacle branch circuits. The first one I worked on was a little mystery: all the receptacles were installed, but the power didn't reach past a certain point in the line. After some investigation with a wire tracer and watching through the videos we took before covering the walls, I worked out what had happened: two receptacles shared a stud bay, facing into opposite rooms. The plan had been to bring power up to one box, jump over to the other box, and continue back down to the crawlspace to the next box. We forgot the jumper. I couldn't fish a wire between the boxes myself, so that repair waits. Upstairs, installing two receptacles completed the branch. The bathroom vent hole in the tile backer board was a skosh too small. ...

Howell Cabin

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