Yay for Summer

This past week has been amazing! With summer vacation officially on, and marked with a beautiful cicada landing on my head the first day, my days have been spent doing nothing but work on the house. I have most of the metal roof on (had to order a different rake trim before I could seal it all up), the nose of the trailer is all framed out with the plywood screwed on, and the bathroom fan is cut out with some detail work all done -although I have no photos yet of these happenings. My hope is that in a week and a half I can make the official call to the insulation folk and get this baby ready for the interior work.

What I have come to realize is that electric is my achilles heel. I've sought outside help, but most who are local seems to be unfamiliar with dc wiring, or are just generally confused by the whole endeavor. Even the local solar places- they install grid tied systems and so everything goes to an inverter. No concern for things like voltage drop in that scenario. One electrician did come out and give me some advice about where to run things, and the connectors to use, which was extremely helpful. 

After just one phone call, I am in love with the folks at New England Solar in the Berkshires. The guy there was able to answer all my questions about gauges, battery sizing, etc. immediately and without confusion. He was also able to help me figure out how to run the wires for the charging outlet meant for a bike generator. I'm hoping to order my kit from them fairly soon.

So the house is currently 90% wired, after some trial and error. I have photos of some of the electrical work, as well as some other things that were completed during the spring.

Conduit brackets are bolted to beam clamps, which are attached directly to the beams of the trailer. I plan to go back and use some lactate to make sure nothing wiggles loose.

I ended up choosing liquid-tite flexible conduit, running it right under the trailer. they pop up at various points, with separate lines for ac and dc. 

Each line is colored and labeled. 

The conduit octopus emerging from the front.

An electrician suggested I color code the insides of my boxes- one for dc and the other for ac.

The chimney support installed. I called in some assistance from someone who actually does this for a living.
I figured it was better safe than burning the house down. 

The installed cat door (with plastic for the time being- until the interior part is put in too). And before you ask... there will be a deck and so Willow will not have to jump up 3 feet to get in.

It was absolutely terrifying cutting into the doors to put in the hardware- holes every which way.
And now they are in and I do longer need a 2x4 holding the door closed. 

The threshold, dirty but complete.
These two pieces were made from some scrap maple dad had hanging around the shop.

To make sure the batteries will fit, I made some cardboard ones before building the nose. Separated by a wall to keep sparks away from gases, the left side will be the distribution boxes and all that good stuff.