Powered Up !

The big news this week is we finally have power inside! 

The truck on the right is a power vacuum that creates a trench in frozen dirt with vacuum power. They use this near buildings to keep from damaging them with the ditch witch that they use for the rest of the trench.

It was very slow going with the ground so frozen.

Dan finished as far as he could on the north chimney and moved his scaffolding to the south chimney. So we got to see the first bit of stone! I think it looks quite good.

Service entrance on the east side of our detached garage. At the bottom of the photo you can see the trench made by the vacuum truck.

Connected! The feed from the grid comes up in the leftmost conduit and ties in to the lugs on top. The Red and Black wires from these lugs feed over to the Time Of Use meter on the left. The wires on the bottom (and so on the customer side of this meter) provide two 200a feeds in to the transfer switch on the far right.

The roofers began working on the flashing for the north chimney. They built a tent to protect themselves from the cold and wind.

Scaffold on south chimney.

Brock from Select Mechanical installing tube for the hydronic (in-floor) heating system. Here he’s using a device that spreads the connector out. Once spread he’ll slip it over a barbed fitting and it will shrink to make a solid joint.

With it so cold in the basement (about 50°f) he has to use a torch to get it to shrink. He said that during the summer they don’t need to do that.

The stone guys keep buckets of sand and water near the temporary furnace in the basement to thaw them out.

Progress on the south chimney. 

Looking up. You can see how they secured their tent to the side of our house to keep themselves and the stone warm enough.

A couple of torch heaters for heating water and mud.

When it’s below 0 out even the smallest hole is a problem. Sponge to the rescue.

First icicles.

Spencer mixing mortar in 2°f weather. He’s got a torch on the bottom to keep it from freezing. With temps in the minus teens the next couple of days the stone guys won’t be able to do anything. He said that hope to be back on Thursday if the weather warms up enough.

Materials for framing the detached garage were delivered today.