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Month: August 2019

Cars

Cars

The cars getting valet at dinner tonight were not too shabby. I suspect many of the cool cars are already setup at the Quail, which is tomorrow. Monterey Car Week makes for nice things.

That 1958? 250 Testa Rossa is a pretty cool car. A rare 1957 sold for $39 million a few years back.

Cars

Cars

Next week is car week in Monterey and the Councours at Pebble Beach, so my feed will be a little more car focused! I’ll be there Wednesday to Monday.

The Quail looks to have some cool things this year and the ‘Exoctics on Canary Row’ is now ‘Exoctics on Broadway’ and has moved to Seaside due to room.

Here are some of my favorites from last year.

House

House

Having completed most of the hole drilling and route mapping, it is time to pull wire. Lots of wire. I have all of the wire onsite, the drops labeled, and the paths marked.

I am planning on doing the big pull on Saturday August 24th and Sunday August 25th. ( 2 weeks from now ) This is a task that gets much much easier with more and more people. A single pull can take 30 mins with a single person, but with 4 or 5 people along the path it can take 1 min.

So, if you are interested and available to help out anytime that weekend, I would be extremely grateful. There isn’t any particular skillset required as the task is more about coordination and movement. There are some paths that might need some replanning in flight, so if you are someone that like puzzle solving that might be just the thing for you.

I have all of the equipment needed (wire being the biggest), although bringing a pair of gloves is probably helpful. If you are planning on building your own house someday this is a cool way to see some wiring ideas you might want to use.

If you are able to help out, drop me a message and I’ll coordinate logistics. Even just an hour of help makes a huge difference! [ Note – helping out also means you get first invite to housewarming parties, and lift time in the shop. 😉 ]

Dig

Dig

It’s trench time! We got approval for the electrical service plan, so it is time to do some digging. I currently have a single transformer across the driveway from the house, but it isn’t sufficient capacity for the service. Since it is also a bit of an odd location I decided to relocate the pad to the back edge of the driveway, and run new conduit from the house to the transformer as well as new high voltage primary conduit from the new pad to the original vault.

I did 3 3″ conduits to the transformer from the house which will support the two meter setup with a dedicated 200A Tesla/EV charging meter (on a different rate plan). The three conduits will also allow me to have a 600amp primary service instead of a 320amp if the need arises. I have a tertiary service with meter and transformer down at the gate, as pulling 120/240 over 1000ft isn’t a great idea. PGE also has to upgrade the fuse up on Skyline from a 6amp (7200v) to a 25amp (7200v)

I got the natural gas sleeve installed, the primary water line connected all the way to the house, and 5 data conduits down the the front gate as well as a patch area. The conduits going to the gate are a single pull of almost 1000ft, but I suspect I am going to need to have an intermediate pull box as I don’t think the natural gas guys are going to pull that far in a single pull.

The gas line in the house is mostly installed. It is a 2psi setup designed for 1.5 million BTUs.

I’ll run a 12 fiber single mode in one of the conduits all the way to the gate, plus some control lines for other things.

Wire

Wire

I moved wire into the house from my trailer yesterday evening. Today I’ll be trying to finish up all of the drilling paths and do a few of the remaining speaker rough in. If anyone wants to stop by I’ll be here all day.. send me a msg. Woot!

House

House

Progress continues. The outside carpenters have made progress on the trim, the dirt moving has started on the septic field, and most of the internal can lights are up!

Plumbing, electrical, and HVAC are all making progress and getting close to inspection.