It was painstaking work for us to trench for our electric. Bre and I had rented a dingo trencher, dug some by hand with an adze, our bare hands, laid the cable, and prayed for our inspection to pass. Luckily, it did. And there were no questions about it either. The inspector came out and checked out the depth of our trench; he also took a look at our temporary panel in the little red shed. I was nervous that the depth of our trench would not be sufficient or perhaps there would be some flaw with how we wired the panel. I had heard horror stories about electrical inspectors and I had just assumed that this would be unpleasant. I couldn’t be more wrong.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t trying to pull any fast ones. We really want everything to be up to code, and we want to do things the right way. The problem is that I’m not an electrician. Sure, I know how to put in electric service and how to wire outlets and lights and whatnot, and I will be doing that for our cabin. I just don’t know every little nuance about every little code, so I assumed that something would not be 100% accurate. I was pleasantly surprised when the inspector showed up and he was cordial and very helpful. He provided me with some reading materials with applicable code for when I move the electric service to the cabin, and he did do a thorough job of inspecting our temporary panel and service line. At the end of the day, however, the inspection passed with flying colors.
This is a monumental “little step” for us. Throughout this whole project, I’ve tried to divide it up into little steps so that we’re constantly completing some of them. Looking at a project of this magnitude as all-encompassing into one goal I think would just be disheartening, and I need to check off little steps as they’re completed so that I can visualize the progress that’s been made. For me at least, that keeps me on task to complete the little steps and not get disappointed when there are set backs. As far as little steps go, this was a pretty big one. We had talked about buying a generator and running our tools off of that when we build the cabin, but this makes way more sense. First, we’d have to run electric to the cabin anyways, so now that’s already 80% complete. We just have to move it when it’s ready. Secondly, it saves us money from not having to buy a generator. Furthermore, it saves us from having to listen to a generator run constantly during an already stressful process of construction. Also, we have ELECTRIC in the shed! We can go finish cleaning it out, have an electric cooktop, or even a fridge for when we’re out there. And I couldn’t be happier.