The $20k Homestead - Part 8 - The Grid

in #diy7 years ago (edited)

20k_homestead_pt8.jpg
Welcome back to our $20k Homestead series! Links to all previous posts are at the end. This post is all about THE GRID.
greenacrehome-steemti-bar.png

The Grid


The (power) Grid

This may as well be a four-letter-word to many hardcore homesteaders 🙊 🙉, but for us (and probably the vast majority of you reading this), connecting our home to the power grid was a requirement and logical next-step in the building of our homestead. We would love to be off grid in the future, but we're not ready for that just yet.

Our local power company is a membership co-op, but to be honest, I don't really know what that means other than they're a small regional company and do several community involvement projects.

Oh yeah, and saying the word co-op gives you warm fuzzies. Try it!


I called and setup a time for a representative to come out to our land and talk about connecting our home to the power grid. There were two options:

  • 🐦 Aerial - Run wires from the nearest power pole to another sub-pole at our home and into our meter base.
  • 🐛 Underground - Trench from the nearest power pole to where the meter base will be at our home, then have the lines laid in conduit.

We went with the Underground option. While more work, it's just a cleaner install and less hassle to work around in the long term.
greenacrehome-steemti-bar.png

The Expensive Way or The Fun Way?

We were responsible for digging the trench ourselves, and the power company had strict requirements:

  • 📗 Minimum 36 inch depth the entire distance. Anything less than 36 inches would result in conduit not being run and a fee to come back out later.
  • 📗 Minimum 6 inch width. Same as above... anything less and a re-visit fee would be charged.
  • 📗 Be complete from point-to-point (no digging would be done by the power crew). The power pole and the house's meter base had to be exposed down to the 36 inch depth and ready for conduit to be attached and run up the poles.
  • 📗 Our meter base be installed and ready for conduit to be attached.

Our septic installer was still on-site when we found out about trenching the power lines, so I asked him what his charge would be for digging the trench and leaving the back-fill to me... $300. The cost to rent a mini excavator from our local hardware store was $175.

❓ Now, which do you think we chose? It's okay, I'll give you a millisecond to think... Of course--the DIY/Cheap Way! A call to our local hardware store (who also rents equipment) and a the next day I had myself a mini-excavator! Waahoo!
greenacrehome-steemti-bar.png

What is a Meter Base?

Okay, quick side note because you may be wondering what the heck a Meter Base is. We were, until Google clued us in. A meter base is a wood post set at least 36 inches into the ground at a home. It acts like a miniature power pole for the power meter and external breaker box to be mounted on that then feeds the home. Here you can see our meter base waiting for the power company to run their lines into. The small conduit runs power to the well pump, the large conduit runs power from the meter base to the home, and the small copper wire goes to our two 8 foot ground rods--one at the base, and another 6 feet away (code requirements).

Isn't that usually on the home?
You're too clever! Yes, it usually is... with "house houses"... or double-wide mobile homes. Single-wide mobile homes are viewed differently in our region and not considered permanent. We had the option of permanently mounting it to our home since we owned both the home and land, but knowing later down the road we would be redoing the exterior of the home and possibly adding on to it, I opted for the mount that was most likely to not require me calling the power company to come back out.

greenacrehome-steemti-bar.png

Trenching Time!

The next day after calling the hardware store, they delivered the mini excavator. It was Friday and I had it for the weekend at the cost of a 1 day rental. Perks of a mom-and-pop store being closed on Sunday and only open half day Saturdays.

As my luck runs... it was raining. No worries! I arrived and promptly got my truck stuck... 20 feet into the driveway. Luckily, I just had an excavator dropped off! A quick hookup with a tow strap, and I pulled it backwards and into the grass. We had yet to get our gravel for the driveway and the clay soil was super-duper-whooper slick!
I started at the power pole and worked my way backwards towards the house. I had to keep in mind where the nice new septic system was and give it a wide berth around the end of the drain field. Notice my new parking spot for the truck... safely away from the Big Bad Mud... a formidable foe to my two wheel drive truck! That's my brother, Josh, with the shovel. He had the lucky (but paid) job of making sure I kept the trench to the right depth and cleaning up any small variances in it for me.
Working my way backwards and nearly to the meter base. I got the hang of the excavator controls pretty quickly and this job went faster than I had expected. No doubt, exponentially faster than digging it by hand!
Okay, close enough! I had to watch myself and nearly hit the house a time or two, to be honest. I ended up straddling the trench with the excavator tracks and finished the trench digging out from the meter base to the already-dug trench.

greenacrehome-steemti-bar.png

While I Have It...

While I had the excavator, I did some cleanup work to the grading of the house site.

We are required to have "Positive Drainage" by the county we live. This means rainwater must run away from the home and not under it. Our graders didn't do a super job at this, so I cleaned it up with the mini excavator.
Despite how it looks, this is a good photo! It shows that the rain water doesn't go towards the home, even after a big rain! Nevermind the pool... it's because I have the soil piled up waiting for the power to be run and to back-fill the trench. After that, it'll be sloped to drain completely.

I also let Josh (my brother) use the excavator for some projects over at his place. We're all on the same tract of land. I think I mentioned that in another post. Anywho, he used it to begin his underground greenhouse, but I'll leave that for him... he's getting setup on Steemit and I'll let him share that awesome project.

greenacrehome-steemti-bar.png

Missing Photos

Either we forgot to take them, or we have misplaced them. Either way, we have no photos of us back-filling the trench with our fancy 2 inch conduit full of power in it. Oh well...

So you had power now?
Not yet... the power company doesn't connect the power to the home (by installing the power meter) until the county issues the Certificate of Occupancy... the official OK to live in the home. We're still a few projects away from that point...


greenacrehome-steemti-bar.png

Coming Up Next

This update puts us past a MAJOR milestone!!!

💸 💸 The End of Contractors! 💸 💸

Meaning, the rest of the work needed to get our CO from the county could be done by us! Waahoo! Now we were just waiting on... us!

Time to get going! We were only waiting on ourselves now!

See you on the next post!

Until then,
@greenacrehome

Do you like DIY?

Outdoor Kitchen Build Series - IN PROGRESS

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5

$20k Homestead Series Past Posts

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and Part 7.


Brand Ad w Steemit.jpg

The Grid is a part of the Tron system, created by Kevin Flynn... wait... wrong grid... Read about that grid here: http://tron.wikia.com/wiki/Grid
Sort:  

Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by greenacrehome from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the

If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.

Another step closer to being finished! And I expected you did the DIY ;-) Resteemit for folks to start following you!

You know it. :) If it can be DIY'd, I will do it. If I don't know how, I will research and learn until I know how. :) Thank you so much for the resteems! I appreciate it, really.

Being connected to the grid isn't necessarily bad. But, it helps to have a plan for not being connected when you setup the connection in the first place.

True 'dat! :-) To my surprise, our power company has a free program where you can have someone come out and evaluate and talk about grid-tie systems and such for your home. Our neighbor has a grid-tie system with about 30 PV panels (old though, probably 8+ years). He "makes" about $75 a month from them.

I wouldn't really be interested in a grid-tie system. I'd rather wire up separate solar circuits in the home and slowly switch over, or (more realistically) run a hybrid system with both power options.

Well, if you have a battery system that runs the entire house, it can be charged either from the grid or the alternate energy methods. Obviously, getting started with one of those systems is a little pricey, but in the long run, you have the added security of being able to charge your house battery when the grid goes down. And, you don't have to add the alternate energy methods immediately.

Well written!
Now that I have this in my comments I will wait to resteem.

I like the underground option too. Does this give you power outside at the base? or do you need a generator for electric tools?

Still no power at all. They're good at setting it up to where you can't bypass it. Not that I would have even tried... KAAAZZZZAP!!!

Woo looking great!! We thought about renting a mini excavator for a variety of projects, but we would have to go through Home Despot, and they don't deliver and cost arms and legs, ugh.

One thing I want to mention, have you priced out home-owner's insurance yet? We moved from a regular house to a manufactured home and found out the hard way that most home owner's insurance companies will not insure this type of home & we had to get specialty insurance. We're now paying more for insurance on our $30k house than we did for our $200k house, and for a fraction of the coverage. It's ridiculous! Just wanted to mention because this is something I wasn't expecting and it had an impact on our budget!

We rented the backhoe from Home Depot for the soil test pits, and you're right! They're very expensive!!!

We're still researching insurance options. It's not been easy, but unfortunately, also not been top on our list. I'll get my wife to check into it. She's good at pinning things like that down. :)

This post has received a 3.72 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @greenacrehome.

click here!This post received a 1.8% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @greenacrehome! For more information,