7.7.2014

Jim left early this morning for a trip to the barn to pick up some supplies, went to the plumbing supply house to get our back-ordered items, and finally stopped at the septic designer's office...only to find it closed.  So that part of the morning was frustrating.

I made some calls this morning while he was gone to try and get a quote from another electric inspector.  The building inspector had given us this list of people to use...besides the one that Jim called originally, the other two firms on the list were basically dead-ends...one the phone numbers either came up as a wrong number and the two cellphones weren't accepting voice mail; the other firm said they don't do inspections in our county. But that person gave me the name of another inspector - I left a voice mail but we never got a call back.

Jim and I have this discussion daily...we try to work with companies and are in the market to do business with them, and people don't return phone calls or emails, don't do what they say they are going to do...it's very frustrating.  In the economy today, you would think people would be doing anything possible for new business but it doesn't seem to be that way.

I also had to track down out town highway department.  They refinished the road where our lot is a couple weeks ago...did a great job and it looks so nice.  They didn't do the shoulders yet but they are supposed to come back and do those.  They are now working on an adjacent street.  When we got back from Vermont and went to the land on Friday, we noticed that the asphalt company had apparently emptied their hopper right in our driveway apron. Plus, the hard rains we've had coupled with the fact that the shoulder isn't done has left a big ditch between the road and our driveway.  So getting in requires watching out for the sharp asphalt piles and going slow over the ditch!  I finally got in touch with someone who said they weren't working today (everyone must have taken a 4-day weekend!) but he would have them remove the piless and see about filling in the ditch.

Meanwhile, Jim came back to the land and worked on finishing up the electric meter.  You can see in this picture that the two lines that will eventually go to the carriage house and the house are in place - Jim just capped the ends until we need them.  He got the cable laid in the ditch the required way - he had to cut through all the cable to make two lines to go into the transformer.  The cable is so thick his normal cable cutters wouldn't work - he had to use a hacksaw!  He later put sand on top of the cable (not pictured).

Unfortunately, it was an on/off rainy day.  So we weren't able to get back to work on the footers but getting the electric work done was another big step.