The Quarky Engineer

It is amazing what difference a day makes with power tools.

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. 😉 ]

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.

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!

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.

More drilling! I’ll be at the house all afternoon if anyone wants to stop by. Msg me.

Since I’m getting close to pulling wire, I need to decide on the layout of the server room. It isn’t a huge room, but this arrangement gets me 2x 48U server racks, plus a dedicated network rack, and I can get to the front and back of each rack. The ceiling in this room past the stairs is 9′ 10″

There is an access door in the back of the server room to a small concrete crawlspace that might be useful for wine storage or the like as it is fully underground and surrounded by concrete on all sides. The server room has a dedicated mini-split mounted on the side of the wall, and the dedicated 16KVa UPS will be in the mechanical room next door.

It would seem like 96Us of servers is plenty. As with most racks, power density will be the limiting factor. I’m only planning on 240V/60A (14kw) total rack power.