Saturday, August 28, 2004
It's All About Power
It's 3:30 AM and I'm downstairs drinking
coffee and typing on the computer. Re-occurring dreams about my parents and
their now sold house woke me up and have me trying to shake off "that
feeling". "That feeling" is the emotion I feel at this time of night when
dreams take on an extra importance. For me, dreams have more impact at this
hour although, those feelings usually go away when the sun comes up. In
Southern California at this time of year, sunrise is 6:21 AM.
During the day my thoughts are usually about what I need to do to prepare
for the new house. What I need to put in order to get ready for the county
inspector who will be looking for violations and discrepancies.
My focus this week
has been on digging the trench for the new power line. The previous owner
used aluminum wire which he buried without conduit. What the fire didn't
get, the gophers did. When the insulation on underground aluminum wire is
damaged, moisture gets in and the aluminum tends to oxidize. Some sections
of this wire are nothing but bloated lengths of powder. (Not sure what shape
the gopher is in)
Unlike the previous owner who didn't worry about building permits, my work
will have to pass inspection by the county. Buried power lines must be in
conduit and at least 18" deep. That's 18 inches to the top of the conduit
and the inspector will be walking the trench to make sure I haven't cut any
corners.
"Technically" this work should be done by a licensed electrician but over
the years I've picked up enough knowledge to do it myself. The inspectors
realize that people in the back country have to do a lot of their own work
and they usually just look for code violations without asking too many
questions. The bid I got from the contractor for this job was $45 per foot.
The trench is about 100' and I'll be darned if I'll pay to have someone do
something that I used to do for the Physical Plant as a matter of course.
In a couple of weeks the electric company will install a new transformer on
the closest power pole and run a line above ground to a new pole a 100' into
our property. My responsibility begins there and I'll be installing the
electric meter and breaker panel and running the wire underground the last
100' to the construction site. Not too technical and my material cost is
$200 plus $1,200 to SDG&E for the new transformer and power pole. Not bad
compared to the $4,500 the contractor wanted.
(OK, now it's 4AM. Wonder what's on TV. Never
mind, here comes the cat.)
__________
Catherine at the house site using a magnet to pick up
nails
