Here’s the air mattress setup and awaiting sheets. With the shed electrified I spent my first night sleeping in my “new home” and it worked out quite well. Other than waking up at 3 AM when a heavy downpour was pounding on the roof, I slept quite well. (I’m sure my exhaustion from the day’s efforts helped!)
I woke the next morning and got started on the wiring and organizing the shed needed for long term use. With four circuits in the sub-panel, I was planning a 15-amp circuit for lighting, a 15-amp dedicated circuit for the A/C unit, a 20-amp circuit for outlets in the shed, and a 20-amp circuit for outdoor outlets. Eventually, the shed would be a workshop, so the two 20-amp circuits would handle various power tools effectively. And the outdoor outlet is useful since most of the dirty work (table saw, chop saw, etc.) would be done outside.
I went to Home Depot for some materials including a proper dedicated outlet for the A/C, GFCI outlets, and lighting. I grabbed a shop light, and before putting it in the cart noted that the box boldly advertised BLUETOOTH! For a few moments I was pondering what the heck this meant; why would there be Bluetooth in a shop light? Turns out, it has built in speakers that are Bluetooth controlled! So, of course, I bought this one!!! Turns out that it’s the perfect sound for a small workshop and way easier than me keeping a small Bluetooth speaker on a shelf.
I completed all the wiring (skipping the outdoor circuit for now as it was raining hard all day) and cleaned up my newly functional space. The layout allows for a somewhat more “clean corner” where the air mattress is rolled up (and to be inflated at night) along with a relaxing hammock to use during the day (or maybe to sleep in?) As my final act for this two day effort, I sat in the hammock with a beer pondering my efforts. This may be the first time I set out to complete a specific multi-day project and honestly completed it fully. Well done!
There was one last outdoor effort, so I started on that – adding a new ground for the shed. For reasons not worth explaining, I made the decision to give the shed a separate earth ground rather than run a fourth line through the conduit. Driving a ten foot copper rod into the earth shouldn’t be that big a deal, but here we are on a retired blue stone quarry where there are stones everywhere. The short story is that I got the rod about half way in (~4′-5′) FIVE TIMES before hitting a rock that I couldn’t navigate so I remove the rod each time and tried again. On the sixth attempt, I drove it home and attached the ground wire from the rod to the sub-panel before properly burying the rod cap.
This image shows a work in progress, the finished wiring was “neater” in the box, but here’s what happened. Due to the delays in getting the ground rod done, I was behind schedule with plans to sleep in the shed for the first time. In order to do that, I really needed power to be comfortable – for lighting, phone charging, and, oh yeah, air conditioning! (Did I mention it was sticky weather?) Then, as I was completing the tie-in, I realized that I forgot to buy an actual electrical outlet for the shed! I had everything else, so I figured I drop by the local home store after dinner forgetting it was Sunday night and they close early. So after dinner, I powered off a circuit in the house, removed an outlet from that circuit, and installed it in the shed to both test my work and give me power for my first night.
Lo an behold, everything worked and this circuit tester confirms correct wiring! My neighbor, patiently waiting to have a celebratory bourbon once the wiring was confirmed, came by to see if I needed help just before we confirmed my work. We agreed that getting the A/C unit in the window and running would be best done before the bourbon, so we unpacked the unit, made a few silly assembly mistakes, and ultimately got the unit into the window and running. By now it was about 10:30 PM, so a celebratory bourbon was definitely in order.
After a bourbon and some conversation, I made my way back to my new Tiny House and tried to get a bit organized and comfortable. It was a bit of a mess after the rush to finish the work, so I saved most of the organizing for the next day and got onto the air mattress to see how sleeping in a shed was going to work out.
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Because temps the first weekend set a record (101F with 116 Heat Index) and were only marginally better on the other days, I didn’t take a lot of photos. Here’s one photo taken when I started the dig just to get an idea of the distance. Considering that the property is a former blue stone quarry, I got pretty lucky in that only about a 30′ stretch of the 75′ had a lot of stone. That section was, obviously, the hardest – but most of the rest was just soil with a few stones here and there.
This is a totally ridiculous selfie, but I was noting that I was wearing a hat to protect from the sun, a bandana as a headband to catch some of the sweat, along with my prescription eyeglasses. This wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, and I had to take off my muddy gloves frequently to towel off my face and arms from all the sweat. For the most part, I worked in the early morning and the late day to avoid the peak sun. It was still terrible.
Despite my complaining here, I completed this job and got the conduit, the wiring and the water connection laid in the trench, and the trench refilled and covered. After burying the conduit, I placed some blue stone flat along the top of the trench to give an immediate indication to anyone that tries to dig there in the future. I will also be laying a bluestone and pea gravel walkway over this section as, well, a walkway from the house to the shed. However, this path will also both show the location of the conduit and mitigate the likelihood that anyone would ever dig there. The latter just being an added benefit of the former, which is my purpose.
Up next will be actually tying in the electrical sub-panel that I’m putting in the shed.
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The bulk of today was spent on the demolition of the back of the house and filling the current dumpster. There are three really small rooms: mud room, bathroom, small bedroom – yet the demolition is slow going. This section of the house was added on at some point, and all the exterior siding was left in place and layered over with various layers of lath, plywood, insulation, drywall, and other assorted materials. It’s just a nightmare to demolish as there aren’t many cavities to get a pry bar (loosely a smaller crowbar) into and they used an overabundance of nails and screws here. This may take another day or two!
The only area in this part of the house with any airspace is the roof; and, sadly, they didn’t seal this area properly to the outside. So with open soffits, critters of all kinds have called the roof cavity here their home – probably for a number of years. Each section I opened was packed to the gills with shredded insulation, leaves, twigs, acorns, and evergreen shrubbery. And this photo is just a small example. I filled six contractor bags full of debris just from inside the roof.
The bathroom is located in this addition as well, before this was added, there was likely only an outhouse. For some reason, they didn’t bother to close in the flooring around the bathtub, so this area, as well, was full of critter housing. It’s a good thing I was wearing a mask because the stench when removing this stuff was heinous.
And, for good measure, here’s one more photo of critter housing in the ceiling. It’s truly amazing that the framing of this house is not completely rotted through. Considering that much of the stench was from critter urine and excrement, it’s also amazing that the house really didn’t smell that bad – until I opened all of this up.
When I reached a frustration (and exhaustion) point on the demolition, I moved on to some electrical work. If you’ve never seen it, this is the inside of a circuit breaker panel. In this case, there are only three breakers installed (3 standard, 1 double) at this time. The main service comes in from the bottom, runs along the right gutter to the top of the box, and then comes back down where it is attached to three large lugs. Each of the large black service lines is 120-volts resulting in 240-volt service. The bundle of silver lines without sheathing is the neutral that attaches to the circuit breaker bus. Basically, the black lines bring in the power and the neutral completes the circuit out to the power lines.
Below the lugs there is a large 200-amp breaker – that’s the main shutoff. When the box has the cover on as it usually will, none of the service lines can be seen or touched and only that main breaker (and all the other smaller breakers) can be accessed. This is because the service lines are always hot (live) even when that main is off. And while each of the service lines can be handled separately and safely while live, there’s always a chance of shorting the connection and taking a full 120-volts (or 240-volts) of electrocution through your body. So, even though you can turn off the main and install new breakers, I use an abundance of caution and disconnect the meter outside resulting in a completely safe circuit box.
Today I simply rewired the water pump (that we’re working to replace) to assure that the wiring is modern and up to code. I also added two new circuits to power outdoor lighting – one existing and one to be installed later. Lastly, I began working out the wiring plan for the rest of the house.
I probably won’t do much, if any, more electrical work this week. The house needs a good wiring diagram drawn up and I’d rather do that from home and use the time locally to do physical work instead.
Regardless, today was a huge success as it’s the first time I installed an entire circuit from scratch, including the new breakers! Having done this successfully (tested and all) I feel confident in my ability to do the rest of the wiring as planned. This is a huge cost savings for us, even if it will likely take me many days to execute the full plan. I think I’ve earned myself some Bourbon (and Buddha!)
First, here’s a reminder of the electrical system when we bought the house. That photo at the right is a tremendously old school fuse box. It’s got effectively four circuits (fuses) that are 25A (amp) each for total service to the house of 100A. The 100A service is pretty typical, even these days, but 25A circuits are not. There are two key differences. First, today’s “typical” circuit is 15A or, more likely, 20A. Second, adding up the circuit breakers in a panel will total more than the 100A service while this has precisely the fuses to service the home. None of this is terribly important (to the typical homeowner) but I’m sure you can tell that the fuse box is quite outdated.
Here we are entering the 21st century with a new service panel. This panel handles 200A instead of the previous 100A. It’s highly unlikely that I’ll need more than 100A, but the difference in cost is about $100 on a job that’s a bit over $1,500, so it’s negligible. What did I get for the extra $100? The most valuable part of this upgrade is space – just having more room to work in the panel and more slots for extra circuits – that’s the best reason to go with 200A. And, if I needed to upgrade later, it would be very expensive and require tearing up the finished walls, so doing this now is definitely worthwhile.
The day of the upgrade wasn’t great weather, but it wasn’t expected to be too bad. Well, for the most part, it wasn’t. But precisely timed with the outdoor portion of the electrician’s effort was a long and steady downpour. He was a trooper, though – he tossed on a heavy raincoat, donned some thick gloves, and kept at it. He did inform me that there’s one step where he’d be tying into the municipal line that he’d need a break in the rain – luckily, that wasn’t an issue. Before I knew it, he was done outside and was tying in all the final components to the new panel inside.
Since I’ve got the walls open and I’ve seen the patchwork (and not to code) wiring in the house, I decided to rewire everything in the house. So the electrician simple left everything disconnected and wired two new outlets for me to use in the meantime. The only existing item we connected immediately was the water pump which actually had modern, outdoor grade (since it runs into the crawl space) romex wiring – so I felt good reusing that line. Everything else has since been stripped out of the house and I’ll be running all new lines soon. When I do, there will be a lot to blog about the new lines and circuits, how they meet code and what I’m doing to prepare for any future needs.
Below are a few reference photos that are useful to understand the upgrade:
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The day after the closing I scheduled to have electricity transferred to us and turned back on, internet installed, and a few contractor visits for the most immediate repairs. The electric is currently a fuse box and a very outdated electric meter, so that needs to be upgraded, the house needs a new septic system and a water purification system would also be required. Internet seems minor in the big picture, but cellular signals are quite spotty in the area, so a solid internet connection can make all the difference from the house.
I met one of the sons of the former owner at 8 AM after leaving NYC just after 5 AM and stopping at Home Depot for tools and supplies. After a short chat, I went into the house and was reminded why Tracy thought we were crazy! The house was pretty trashed with lots of debris left lying around, various holes in walls and many unfinished repair projects. However, this was the point – the house has good bones, so we’ll tear down the walls to the studs, rewire, update the plumbing and build out a fresh, new home.
Since the house had been unoccupied for many months, it was pretty musty inside, but worse was “the jungle” outside – so my first task was “weed whacking.” With my trusty new string trimmer I spent about three hours cutting through the growth all around the house – including a few vines that were reaching underneath the exterior shingles and into the house. I was fully covered in jeans, long sleeves and gloves, but I’d later learn that poison ivy still has a way of getting to me!
After the grounds had been tamed and I could navigate the perimeter of the house easily, it was time to head inside. I first changed the locks and then began gather the various junk from around the house for disposal. Several times I looked at the bathroom, really wanting to give it some attention so it would be at least temporarily functional, but I thought that it was a lost cause. Thankfully, our friends next door gave us a key and told us to use their place as needed.
When the Time Warner Cable installation guy arrived, I was well underway to getting things in (general) order. However, I hadn’t yet dared to put the fuses back in the box to enable the electricity since I really didn’t know what to expect. The electrician had already called to tell me he was running late and I was hoping he’d have helped before TWC arrived. So with the knowledge that Anthony from TWC could call 911 if anything went wrong, I inserted the fuses back into the fuse box. No problem! Electricity restored!
Anthony noted that the house was already wired, but the connection needed to be re-established at the nearest utility pole. He then noted that he had a 28-foot ladder and the pole connection looked much higher than that; but he was able to just reach and make the needed connection. A few keystrokes on each of our smartphones and my modem and router were enabled. Connection to the modern communications world was now established!
By 5 PM the house was “neat,” the jungle tamed, electricity restored and internet established. Not bad for Day One. But when my neighbor Bill saw that I was there he dropped by to ask how things were going. I was proud of what was done, but he suggested we try to get the water running and was very willing to help me.
The plumbing story is a post to itself that I’ll do later!
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