Headed up early Saturday morning, after a great breakfast in Boulder City. We got there, and first thing we noticed was our newly planted trees were all leave-less. Upon further investigation we noticed a lot of deer poop and plenty of hoof prints, the buffet had been open for a week. Good thing though, they only ate the green leaves, the rest of the trees seem to be in tact. Sheralee did some creative closing of the tops and we will leave them for winter. If they make it through, then we should be better off in the Spring.
On our way in, I wanted to stop to take some pictures of the road into our property. This is maintained once a year, maybe twice a year, but was not done this fall. You can see what six straight days of rain and elk hunting season can do to it.
We made it through ok, just a little mud, but by Sunday afternoon it was just fine, but deep ruts.
We also purchased a nice comfort addition for the property and got to enjoy it first thing Sunday morning. ahhhhhhhh
Yes, no more getting up in the cold to start a fire just for coffee. We enjoyed our first hot cup of coffee in bed, and our second cup on the deck.
It was time to get back to wiring the loft electricity. I had to change out a dimmer switch, which sucks, to a simple on/off switch for Sherlaee’s bedside lamp. Did that, then did electrical pulls for our 12 volt fans, that will push warm wood stove air up to our left through the vents. Did that, and then finished off with running coax for our satellite receiver (in the future).
This was the mess I addressed.
This is as you go up the stairs and enter the loft. One switch is a 3 way to light the entry way light below. The second switch (shown wired) is our 12 volt fan switch that is downstairs to push warm air up. The third location is 120 volts for the ceiling fan/light.
While I was doing that, Sheralee did some pretty cool things. She put up our new loft drapes over the patio door.
You can see the drapes, and yeah someone having a beer-thirty break without me. ha. After a bit, I started the wiring again and she worked on our pass-through door from the container to the entry/stair way.
I helped out the last foot above her line to give us about 6′ of space. We still have roughly 10″ to go to get to the full height, but just so cool to see that passage way open. It is becoming more and more legit every weekend. I almost forgot to show the coat rack Sheralee put up in the entry way, so cool.
Little by little we are becoming a home, this part is just so great….hard to even explain it.
Sunday is fun day hahahahahahaha. I had to do the 120 electrical panel install and terminate the upstairs wiring for our outlets and USB outlets. This is the part I had been worrying the most about. Little background, and this is where the techy stuff starts [fair warning]. We purchased a 3500 watt power inverter to turn our battery power into usable house electricity, 120 volts. The only thing with the inverter is that it is a modified sine wave inverter, meaning that it isn’t wired like a normal house electrical input. If I hadn’t done some deep research, I could have torched the inverter and who knows what would have happened to the batteries. I purchased a Seimans 125 amp electrical panel and basically turned it into two separate 120 volt distribution centers.
Red is the common (hot)
Yellow is the neutral
I had it wired in from the inverter plug, to the top termination lugs, and then used a 15 amp circuit breaker to handle the upstairs. Oh I was a tad bit worried, so at first I had to wire in the dc switch and fuse that resides between the batteries and the inverter, just in case.
Once I had that wired in, it was time for a test. I plugged in the panel feed to the inverter, just a thick extension cord lopped off one end, and fired up the inverter. No sparks or smoke, good so far.
I then flipped the curcuit breaker to ON….again nothing happened. (small high five here). I ran upstairs with the volt meter and started taking reading. NADA, nothing at all at each outlet. huh? What had I done wrong? I went back down stairs, and stared at the panel. It took me about 30 seconds to realize I had put the circuit breaker on the wrong side of the electrical panel, the non-hot side. I switched it to the hot side and ran back upstairs. All good!!! We have 120 volts at each outlet and our USB outlets are working great, charging our phones as prescribed.
This is a before and after.
You can see the new big red switch and fuse under the blue inverter.
Wala…we now have 120 volts A/C power in the loft. Moving right along.
Next week, we are doing some misc tasks, but getting ready for my friend John to join us for our siding installation party day! woohoo!