More odds & ends

P1-5  Last post left you/us with a pole in the ground.  Since then the digger came to bury the conduit for the electrical cable from that pole to the barn.  Although the digger tried to cover it up neatly, the ground was very wet and there's going to be A LOT of yard work to be done in the spring.

Meanwhile life/work goes on inside.  P6 - more work on the closet.  P7 - the top step of the stairs got glued and screwed into place.  That odd board on the top step held it tight while the glue set.

P8 - They came to do a home energy test on the house complete with a blower door test - that's the red contraption.  P9 is the meter that shows where we're lacking insulation (and where the mice tunnels are).  Guess what?  The part of the house we did NOT work on, needs work.  Where will it all end?

What now?

After rushing around hosting B&B guests, then rushing around preparing for Sandy who spared us, I thought I was only going to be able to report that Bertha snoozed through the week P1.

But then... it seems a little rain is no reason to stop the guy who came to install the gutters P2 & P3.  It's not something I would choose to do on a rainy day but I guess it's one way of knowing right away if they're working.

Then today P3, P4, P5, the photo-voltaic installation crew came to install the pole that will hold the panels to generate part of our electricity.  A BIG hole, a BIG pile of muddy dirt (they too do not let a little rain stop them), a BIG sonotube (a big cardboard tube like the one in a roll of toilet paper except that this one is blue, 10 feet tall and 30 inches in diameter) into which a BIG, tall 20 foot steel pole is placed and a BIG truckload of concrete is added.  The dirt is pushed back in the hole around the sonotube to hold it and the pole in place.  You might also note the yard, or what was the yard, in the last photo.  If you think it looks bad now, just wait with us until next week when they come to dig the trench to run the electric cable to the barn...