12.7.2016 - We have permanent power!

Wow - this was a BIG day for us - no more temporary power supplying the carriage house - we are now using our permanent power!  Here's the way the day played out...

We woke up to another inch of snow on the ground so we knew it wasn't going to be an outside day.  However, Jim got the last piece of fascia board for the auto bay cut, primed and painted so it will be ready.



Then it was on to electric work.  It's always scary to think about cutting that big electric cable that we just pulled through the conduit yesterday.  But Jim is much braver than I would be so he cut all of the cables cut and then attached into the box!

 

Next step was to work outside hooking up the wire into the meter box.  Jim had to really use all of his brute strength to try and wrangle the wire into the connectors.

As you can see...that's a lot of aluminum inside each cable - certainly doesn't want to bend!

But he got everything hooked up!

Then it was time to cut all of the temporary power lines...

...and pull them out of the conduit that was feeding them into the meter box.

Then Jim had to torque each of the connections down according to specs.

The moment of truth...flipping the breaker to bring full power into the carriage house!!

After we did a happy dance, we went back outside.  All those cables sure look good attached to the meter!

Now that Jim is sure everything works, he can put all the covers back on the meter.

Then we got to start cleaning up the yard.  Way back when we first started, Jim had just taped these sections of conduit together, knowing that eventually they'd be coming apart.  So we cut each section and Jim had to pull the conduit over all the wire.

Then we unplugged all of the wire that was going from our temporary pole into the carriage house and had to wind it all up.  Not that easiest job with frozen wire and wet, frozen hands!

Dismantling the temporary box - it served us well but we are so happy that we don't have to use it anymore!

Tired of rolling up wire, Jim made a quick roller that certainly made the job easier.

The temporary power feed into the breaker box is now removed!

 

We knocked off a little early (not too much - it was dark already!) and headed into Lowe's to pick up a couple things.  This was definitely a red letter day!

 

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