Getting Electricity, A Long Process

Installing Underground Electric Lines

Oncor has pretty strict guidelines for the ditch their lines go into, four feet deep, two feet wide, and with a certain amount of fill.  Nothing we could rent would go that deep, so we contracted out that job.  The guy who did our culvert was going to do it today.  He has a machine like a large bobcat, and he rented a part to do the ditching, but right after he started, he hit rock, blew a hydraulic hose on the part, and covered his machine with hydraulic fluid.  Needless to say, nothing got done today.

After hitting rock, he decided he needs something with a bigger bite.

After a couple of days with this machine, the trench is done.  Forty five inches deep and eight hundred feet long.  Next, a pull box hole has to be dug at the four hundred foot mark and another hole at the eight hundred foot mark for the transformer.  Then Oncor has to inspect it before the lines and pull box installed.  And then, finally, the trench can be covered.  It's quite a process.

Much, much later, all the inspections were approved, the conduit installed, and trenches covered.  This is a picture I took before they covered the last bit.  Solid rock!

We didn't get any fill sand delivered today either.  It's still too wet at their digging site.

In the meantime, we are picking colors, windows, and tweaking our plan.

For the siding, we are going with a light gray, polar white trim, and galvalume roof.  The windows are white though, so if the trim width is very wide around them, we may have to switch to a charcoal gray or blue.  

We looked at a lot of barndominium floor plans, but none that would take advantage of the southern breeze.  We wanted to be able to open the doors and use the garage as an outdoor room.  Here is the rough layout of the floor plan we've drawn:

Published Jan. 24, 2017

Getting Power to the Barndominium So Far from the Road

One decision we had to make when we were trying to decide how far back we could put the barn was whether we would have underground electric or above ground on power poles.  We opted for underground for several reasons.  1) Power poles are ugly (yes, you can say "Duh" here), 2) Above ground power is more likely to have problems than below ground, and most important from Hubby's point of view 3) Underground lines don't interfere with ham radio.  But underground lines are more expensive than above ground lines.  Thousands more.  But there is a solution.

We learned that the electric provider, Oncor, will provide the first 200 feet underground at no extra charge, but anything over that was about $12 per foot.  But then we learned that there is a substantial rebate per electric meter, up to 400 feet and that if we put in two meters, the total cost would actually be cheaper than above ground, up to 800 feet.  There is an additional cost for getting underground lines too, we had to pay for the trenching.  Also, Oncor is fairly picky when it comes to the depth, width, and fill of the trench, and they require a pull box at 400 feet, which was even more digging.

But we calculated the cost of the additional monthly base rate for the extra meter and the additional ditching, and decided the overall savings made it worthwhile for the privacy of being further from the road and not having radio interference.

We have already had the main trenching done, but the guy who did it brought the ditch to the middle of the wall where windows will be located.  Not a good spot for meters, so five or six feet of the ditch needed to be moved.

Over the weekend, Hubby rented a backhoe to do some additional work on the trenching, and the electric pull box was placed in the hole dug for it.

Today, the electric pole was put in at the road.  It is for our transformer, and the line will run underground from here to the barn.  Update:  The transformer will not be at the road, it will be near the house.  The electric pole is just to have the electric lines in the right place.

Published Mar. 7, 2017

It's Big, It's Green, It's a Transformer!

When we pulled into the driveway today, we saw that the transformer had been installed.  Hubby talked to the Oncor guy and he said power would be hooked to the barn in just a few days.  Yippee!  We are getting there.

Published Apr. 4, 2017

We Have Electricity, Finally, Finally!

I was gone when Hubby pulled into the driveway and saw electric lines coming out of the meter box.  So someone from Oncor had been out to pull lines from the transformer to it.  We weren't sure who was to put in the actual meter, so he called TXU to find out and put in a request if needed.  An hour later I got home and was on the phone to a friend when I saw a truck coming down the driveway and he stopped at the transformer.  I may have shouted in her ear that I thought it was someone to put in the meter as I clicked off the phone.  (Sorry Debbie.)

Sure enough, it was a contractor for TXU here to install the meter.  He opened the meter box and said, uh oh, these wires were installed wrong by the electrician.  They are supposed to be in the bottom of the box, not the top.  Worried, I asked if that meant he couldn't put in the meter.  He said he couldn't touch the wiring because of liability.  Before he could leave, Hubby jumped in and said he would do it, and with the electric guy advising, they got it done.  Within minutes, the meter was on and we had electricity.  Beautiful, shiny, humming electricity.

We 💕 Electricity

I'm sure this guy thinks we have completely lost our marbles because we were both so excited to see him.  At one point, he looked over at us and said, "it's just electricity."   I wanted to correct him and say no,  it's not having to get up and refill the generator in the middle of the night, it's being able to stay up past dark, it's being able to turn on more than one light at a time,  and it's being able to watch tv at night without worrying about the generator.  But we just laughed and let him think we were looney.

And then we texted everyone who had been commiserating with us, and a special  thank you text to Jason who made this happen.