5/19/08 I have been worried about a problem for several years now. I built the snowshed over the trailer using scrap logs that already had some rot in them. I figured the snowshed only had to last a couple years and that the logs would easily last that long. Well, it has been some sixteen years now and those logs are threatening to fail. One of them has already broken in the middle. Until now, I hadn't figured out a way to reinforce or replace them without a lot of work and expense that would only further detract from the real building project.

This morning I woke from a dream with the perfect solution. I have half a dozen or so 12 foot pressure treated 4x4s that Doris gave me and which I have been using for all kinds of different purposes ever since. The solution to the problem is to lag screw these 4x4s to the support logs on the snowshed that look like they could use some help. That will certainly hold the snowshed up until I can finally move out of the trailer. At least that's the new plan.

Talked with Brian Kemly today. We decided that I would take a bunch of equipment with me this week and get as much work done on it as I can before he comes up on Saturday. He said that all the conduit must be in place and glued in before you pull the wire. So my plan to pull it up alongside the building wouldn't work. He said that we should get Mike Dickinson to take the spools of wire up to the top so we can pull the wires downhill. That means that our pulling rigging will be down at the meter base.

5/20-22/08 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

My plan was to pick up parts and tools from Brian Kemly and get as much work done by myself before having Brian and Bill come up and help me on Saturday. I wasn't sure whether I would need to stay and work Friday or whether I could get everything done by Thursday and go home. I was prepared to stay through Saturday.

Before I left, I drove to Brian Kemly's place of business and loaded the pickup with a whole bunch of tools and material. There were four big spools of wire, a couple hundred feet of 2 1/2" and 2" conduit, elbows, fittings, ground rods, glue, you name it. There was a huge 50 lb. pulley, a big heavy cable puller, a big spool of big rope, drills, saws, conduit benders, etc. etc. A couple parts Brian had ordered were backordered so he called and arranged for me to pick them up at Stoneway Electric on my way out.

By the time I picked the parts up at Stoneway, it was about 1:30 and since I had to drive by home on the way, I stopped in at home and had some lunch. I was on my way a little after 2:00.

I arrived at the property at 4:40. There was a light intermittent rain for the rest of the evening. Bert and Ernie met me and had their usual dog biscuits. I drove the truck up to the upper roadway and started unloading the material and tools.

Just then, Mike Dickinson showed up so I went down and talked to him about the job. He had some ideas that simplified the job. He said that he could bury the section of the conduit under the driveway so that I could still drive up to the trailer. The inspectors would approve as long as they could see that the pipe was buried deep enough at each end. He also said he could plant the pole in such a way as to require only a sweep to connect it to the PUD stub. That would completely avoid messing with the temporary pole and service at all. I was happy with that because that way I would have power during the entire installation process. And finally, Mike said that he could dig the trench leaving the telephone wire intact, and that where he exposed the telephone wire, Verizon could connect the new drop right there. That way, we wouldn't have to dig a trench to the telephone pedestal and make another ditch across the driveway. I was happy with the plan. Mike left and said he'd be back in the morning to dig.

I went back up and unloaded the pickup. I brought the spools of wire and the big heavy stanchions up by the mixer. I stored all the fittings on the front steps, the pipes along the front of the cabin, and I brought the tools inside the cabin. I didn't want anything to get ripped off in case I went home on Thursday plus I wanted to keep the tools and parts dry.

Finally I backed the truck back down to the trailer and went in for the night.

On Wednesday I glued up some 2 1/2" conduit in the upper trench before Mike and his son Drew showed up. They dug the trench from the bedrock outcrop on the hillside to the 2x4 marking the PUD stub. The stub was 3" and I did not have a 36" radius 3" sweep. Mike told me I could get one from his shop, so I drove over to his place and got the sweep.

Mike found the phone wire without breaking it. He finished digging the trench, we placed the conduits in the bottom, and he backfilled the portion in the driveway. He had run into a huge rock which he could barely lift with his backhoe. He put it out of the way to the north of the driveway so it wouldn't interfere with his snowplowing in the wintertime.

When he had finished the job, he came up for a short visit to see what I had done on the cabin. After he left, I had lunch and then went back to work gluing up the 2 1/2" conduit on the hillside. I was surprised at the amount of bedrock at the surface. I will have to vault a lot more of the pipe than I had previously figured. I tried to snake the pipe as close to the surface bedrock as possible following the lowest valleys. As a result, I glued in a couple 45 degree bends and I used Brian's heat blanket to soften and bend the conduit in a few places. By the end of the day, I had finished gluing up all of the outside conduit. I took some pictures of what I had done. I was super tired when I went in for dinner. Working on a granite sidehill is tiring for an old man like me.

On Thursday morning, I called Brian to give him an update on the project. I read a list I had prepared of the projects as I understood them and had Brian prioritize them for me. There were only two high priority projects that I needed to get done and the rest could wait until Saturday because they would require Brian's attention. These two high-priority projects were to install the solid copper ground wire running from the service panel to the copper water pipe on the opposite side of the building, and to install the 2" conduit inside the building running to the service panel.

I started with the solid ground wire. Brian had given me some invaluable tips and advice on how to do this job. As it was, the job took all morning. Without Brian's advice, I'm sure it would have taken me all day, if I could even have finished it by then. That wire is very stiff and very hard to work with running it crosswise to the joists.

On the way in to lunch, I was visited by two Gray Jays and one Steller's Jay. The Gray Jays, of course, ate out of my hands, but the Steller's took peanuts not more than 10 feet from me. That is about as tame as they have been so far.

After lunch, I assembled the 2" conduit. I glued up the straight run, but I left the joints at the elbows and the LB dry. I didn't have a hole saw or a bit that could make the hole in the plate and floor under the service panel. Brian was going to bring a big Forstner bit up on Saturday so I didn't spend any time trying to make a hole.

Since both the high priority projects were finished, and everything else pretty much had to wait for Brian on Saturday, I packed up and left for home at 5:00, feeling every bit as tired as I had the night before.

5/23/08 Friday. Brian Kemly told me that since it wouldn't be possible to drive a ground rod into the bedrock near the cabin, we could instead bury a 2-square-foot piece of steel plate at least three feet deep and connect the ground wire to the plate. He had located a steel company who could provide the plate and told me where it was located. I drove down to The Everett Steel Companies location in Magnolia and bought a 4-sq-ft piece of scrap steel. It was the smallest piece they had that was big enough. I took it up to Brian Kemly's place of business where he was going to have a neighbor shop cut the plate in half and weld a stub of ground rod to it.

We loaded up a bunch of additional tools and equipment and I agreed to meet him at his house in the morning and we would drive up together in my truck. I also confirmed with Bill that he and Cam would also be there in the morning.

5/24/08 Saturday. Brian Kemly, Bill and Cam Edson, and I spent a long hard day working at the property installing the electric service equipment.

I picked Brian up at his house at 7:00. We drove to Lake Wenatchee and stopped in at Mike and Shirley's on the way. We fed Bert and Ernie a few dog biscuits while Mike cut the steel plate in half for us. Brian's neighbor had run out of oxygen and wasn't able to finish cutting the plate.

Bill and Cam had gotten to the property ahead of us, but since they didn't have a key to the gate (I had failed to provide one), they had to wait until Brian and I got there in order to park. Brian and I arrived at about 9:30. Bert and Ernie followed us and got a few more dog biscuits.

We got right to work fixing up the 2 1/2" conduit. I hadn't connected it to the LB at the building and it needed work at the pole to fit into the meter-disconnect box. I had also glued in a couple 45s on the hillside which Brian judged to be too much resistance for the pull. We cut that section out, glued in a long straight section, and then used the heat blanket to bend the pipe so it would mate with the one above it. We got the job done, but it was all a lot of hard work since we were working on the steep bedrock side hill.

There was a lot more work making the pipe fit to the LB on the outside and anchoring it to the foundation.

Brian, Bill, and Cam worked down at the pole installing the meter-disconnect box while I finished up the conduit inside the building. I cut a hole in the plate below the service panel and installed the elbow down through it and connected it to the conduit below. Then I glued up the elbows and pipe on the other end and glued it into the LB on the inside. I didn't connect the pipe to the service panel because I needed Brian's advice on how to do it.

Since we hadn't counted on hooking up to 3" conduit, we didn't have enough of the right parts to do the job. After considering a couple different alternatives, we decided on a plan that only required a 3" coupling, which we didn't have. I called Mike Dickinson and he told me that he had one at his shop and that he would be there in 10 minutes and give it to me. Cam drove me in his pickup over to Mike's place, which took us about 10 minutes. When we got there, Mike was not there yet but one of his backhoes was idling. I looked around and found a 3" coupling. I also looked up and saw that hanging from the bucket of the backhoe, which was about 20 feet in the air, was a whole, dead pig hanging head-down by a chain through one of its back legs. I motioned for Cam to get out of the pickup and come over. I told him that there was something you don't see every day.

Since there was no one around, and we wanted to get going, I walked up to the house, knocked on the door, and told Kari that I was taking the coupling, to tell Mike and thank him, and to make sure she added the part to my bill. Then Cam and I drove back to the property and gave the coupling to Brian.

Some time around noon, we took a short lunch break in the trailer. We knew we had a lot of work ahead of us so we kept working from then on with no breaks.

There were so many details that it is hard to remember all of the things we had to do. There was a lot of rigging involved. Brian and Cam rigged up the wire puller down at the pole. Brian, Bill, and Cam vacuumed a string through the conduit, then used that to pull a tape through, and then used that to pull a big pulling rope through. I used Brian's hammer drill and some nifty anchors to fasten the conduit down to the bedrock in a couple places on the hillside. Bill, Cam, and I rigged up the 50 lb. pulley above the LB on the outside of the building. That would be where the wires entered the conduit on the first pull. Cam and I set up the stanchions and got the wrapping off the spools of wire. Brian showed us how to prepare the ends of the wire and fasten them to the pulling rope.

The actual pulling of the wire was a major operation, but it went pretty smoothly and didn't take too long. Brian was down at the pole operating the puller, which is an electrically powered capstan and which was fastened to the meter pole and the ground. Cam wound the pulling rope around a big spool as it came out of the pipe. Bill was up on top with me. Bill lubricated every inch of the wires as they entered the LB and he guided the wires in. I was monitoring the spools, pulling the wires off them, and making sure the wires came off cleanly without tangling or toppling the spools off the stanchions. That only happened once, before I learned how to prevent it. We were all pleased when the ends of the wires finally emerged from the conduit at the bottom.

Next, Brian connected the 2" conduit to the service panel, which took a little doing. My job on the inside conduit was not quite up to his professional quality but we decided to use it anyway.

We fed all the wires straight through the outside LB, through the inside LB, and into the crawl space. Then we fished a medium size rope through the inside conduit and fastened the ends of the four wires to the rope. After one unsuccessful attempt, and a different way of fastening the wires to the rope, we started pulling the wires through from the downstairs LB up through the service panel. The 2" conduit made for a very tight squeeze and my bends in the conduit made it even tougher. I rigged up a come-along, a snatch block, a couple chains, and a rope up in the utility room which allowed us to pull the wires straight up through the service panel. The come-along had plenty of power to pull the wires, but it only had a few feet of pull. That meant a lot of re-rigging for each rather short pull.

Once the wires emerged past the service panel, we could pull the wires individually, which was a little easier. We still needed the come-along, but the pulling was easier. We were even able to pull the wires by tightening up the rigging and then using our weight on the come-along cable instead of cranking the come-along. I used a series of half-hitches of soft rope around the wire to grip them. Then after each pull, with the rigging slack, the half-hitches could just be slid down the wire and they were ready for the next pull. Bill had the job of sliding the half-hitches down the wire after each pull, and since the wires were covered with a thick slimy lubricant, his hands and the rope were covered in it. That made it hard to get the rope to grip the wire. I was operating the come-along for most of the second half of the pull.

After a lot of hard work, the wires were finally all pulled completely through. Bill was not feeling too well at that point and I don't think Cam was feeling all that well either. Cam had just had his wisdom teeth extracted the day before so it was a heroic effort on his part even volunteering to help in the first place. I really appreciated his help but I felt bad that his mouth was sore.

At one point, Bill suggested what I think is a very good idea: since I have to vault quite a bit of the conduit run with concrete anyway, why don't I form up stairs over the conduit and have a pumper come in and make a concrete staircase going from the lower driveway up to the cabin. I think that is a great idea and I think I will do it.

Bill and Cam carried pipe and equipment down to the truck while Brian and I worked on attaching the wires to the two boxes. When pretty much everything had been carried down, Bill and Cam said their goodbyes and left for home. I didn't notice the time, but it was pretty late. They had both worked a long hard day.

Brian started connecting the wires to the meter-disconnect and it soon started getting dark. I went up and got a trouble light which I brought down and rigged up so that Brian could see to work. When I got down there, Karen Arnold had stopped on her bicycle and was talking to Brian. Brian kept working and after exchanging a few pleasantries, Karen was on her way. While Brian was working on the meter-disconnect box, I got the steel plate from the pickup and placed it in the bottom of the trench at the deepest part. Then I ran a solid copper wire up through a hole in the bottom of the meter-disconnect box and from there down to the steel plate. I stapled the wire to the pole and then clamped it to the rod that was welded to the plate.

While we were working, I got a call from Bill. They were near Stevens Pass and there was a rather big bear in the road. Cars were stopped and people were taking pictures of the bear. Bill said he tried to get a picture with his cell phone but he didn't know whether it will turn out. That plus the hanging pig should give them something to help them remember this day.

When the meter-disconnect was completed and ready for inspection, we went back up to the cabin and finished up wiring the service panel. Brian gave me lots of good advice all the while about various aspects of wiring. It has been truly wonderful having him as a friend and advisor on this project. Now, looking back on what was involved, I don't know how in the world I could have done the job without Brian. I would either have had to hire the work out, which might change my status as an owner-builder electrician, or I might have royally botched the job. I feel very lucky.

There were a couple parts missing from the service panel that would be needed to pass the inspection. Brian explained to me how to install those parts and he said he would get them for me prior to my next trip up on Tuesday. Hopefully I can get them installed before the inspector shows up, or at least be able to show them to the inspector and get passed on the condition that I install them.

With the job done as much as we could, we packed up everything in the truck just as it started to rain, and got on the road to have dinner at the 59er Diner. We didn't realize how late it was until we got to the diner and found it closed. It was just about 9:00. Brian was able to get a free cup of coffee from them anyway, and then we took off for home. Brian was good enough to do the driving which made me extra happy. I don't like to drive, especially at night, and more especially at night when it is raining. We decided to unload in the morning so we went straight to Brian's house and I went home from there. I got home a little before midnight, very hungry and tired. What a week! What a memorable and rewarding week!