PWP

Power
Water
Propane.

Today was the day all that happened. It's funny, you work towards something for months and months and then in one day it kinda all comes together.

This morning our plumber, Jan, showed up with the regulators for the house and shed to reduce the high pressure from the big tank down to useable household pressure. While he was doing that I finished up the generator wiring (I've been working on that for the last 3 days). We were both running our asses off because the inspector for the plumbing final was due to arrive today.

The generator was a bit of a saga. Propane gets turned on so I have the battery installed and it's ready to go. Start up screen on its digital display pops up and as I'm selecting the language Jan called me and it some how ended up in French. Freakin FRENCH! And nothing I do will reset the display so I can get back to english. So I figured out how to do it in french. I got everything right but the day of the week. I don't know those in French.

So the generator is started.

NO POWER OUT OF IT.

I had to go to a website to activate it so that it would power up. Web site failed. ( I found out later that it was because the serial number on the digital display had 3 zeros in it and that locked up the web site). Crystal bailed me out by dialing 1-888-activate.

Still no power.

There was one connector box that wasn't connected. I hooked that up and there it is. :D 120/240 all day long. So I went to fire up the well pump, hit the breaker, nothing happened. I had forgotten to connect the wires to the load side of the breakers. Did that, fired it up, water went everywhere. There was an open valve. So we closed that and everything was fine.

Went into the house and there was no water. Jan crawled under the house and disconnected the incoming fittings and it chunked out so I raced for the shed to shut it down. Reconnected it all. Fired back up. That's when the junk in the lines plugged up every faucet, shut off, aerator, and tub in the house. Plugged up so bad they had to be taken apart under pressure to blow it all out.

This involved me standing by the front door to run like hell when the water broke loose, shut it down and then fire it back up when the valve was reassembled. This took a while.

And this.... BTW..... involved there being lots of water lofted and mud tracked. I hope I'm not in too much trouble for the mess.

While that was going on (in my spare time) I kept wiring in the solar panels and battery bank. Nothing happened until I connected the final battery connection on the series/parallel 48 volt battery bank. Then a lone light was blinking on the interior of the power conditioning box/inverter/battery charger. So I grabbed the control for it and noticed that there was a light blinking next to "Inverter On/Off". I touched the button.

And it sounded like the whole damed building was going to levitate when the contacts closed in. I've plugged high voltage over head fuses that weren't that freakin loud. I jumped through my own ass and nearly ran into the door getting away from it.

When I tentatively inched back.... the inverter was on. One more switch and the battery charger started charging the batteries. This is what we call success. There is now officially a light at the end of the tunnel.

The inspector came and we passed the final inspection on the plumbing. This means we never see them again. I'm thrilled. We also need that to officially move in with the county records dept.

After that I did clean up, and brought in the new washer and dryer, they're still in their boxes.

We painted almost the whole front of the house last night. That Crystal is an amazing house painter. :D

And I'm hoping she doesn't mind too much the mud removal job that is waiting at home following our nightly trip to town to watch Survivor.