Blissfully Quiet

When you spend $300 for a used generator, it is not the quietest that they make. It actually is quite loud. Rod had put it as far as possible from the campers and he also put up some wood to block the noise. However, starting today..... we have ELECTRICITY all the way to the campers!!! Blissfully Quiet! (of course now the dogs will be able to hear everything at night and will bark 4 times more)

Power Trip

We made it to the 1930s. We have electricity! Really, we have always had power, but we had to listen to the generator for 12 hours a day. It was not that bad. We only had a couple of hour outage when the generator did not work. Metal fatigue caused the pull cord housing to break off. It was nothing larger washers could not fix. Now to run the wire 300+ feet to the "twin trailers". It will have to wait until after Thanksgiving. Thank you to Sal for letting us borrow the temporary and the inspector Mr. Baird for inspecting it the day we called him. It cost $27 for me to pull the electrical permit.

Well House

It is late November and I needed to get a temporary well house built. The pump is submersed 190' down. There is a 52 gallon pressure tank, pressure switch and cut-off valves that are exposed until the house is built. I will move everything into the mechanical room of the house when completed, but I have to protect it from freezing over the winter. I built a 4'x3'x3.5' box and will use 3/4" styrofoam insulation on the sides. I will also put it under the roof. I also made a metal roof for it. This should keep it from freezing. I also painted it flat black for added solar heating.

Ditch Witch

This weekend Rod's priority was to get the water line from the well to the campers buried underground. He rented the ditch witch on Friday afternoon and had it all weekend. On Saturday morning he was up early to get started on it... It took over an hour to get it started. After getting it started, he was fairly successful at creating a trench until he had to quit. He had some help for part of the day and some of my friends helped as well. When he quit on Saturday he felt really good about how far he had made it. Sunday was going to be easy to finish.

Sunday came and once again he could not get it started. After over an hour trying, Tina trying, Zac trying... no go. It never started. So now we will have to rent another one next weekend. bummer.

Busy Week

Living in campers is certainly a challenge. This week was not an exception. On Sunday and Monday the generator died in the middle of the night and we had to go outside in the night to start. Monday was the plumbing leak (which Rod thought he fixed but it is still leaking). Tuesday after I got home from work I tried to start the generator. Because of metal fatigue, the part holding the pull cord together broke. So I couldn't start the generator. Rod was able to repait it when he got home. Wednesday morning we realized we were out of propane (which means NO heat). We had all the propane tanks filled on Wednesday - (5) 20 gallon tanks, (2) 30 gallon tanks, and (1) 100 gallon tank for $187. Guess we will see how long that will last. The lows are getting into the low/mid 30's at nights. As for the generator - Rod hooked up our 2nd one that didn't run and has both tanks feeding the 1 engine. He also bought a fuel filter for it. Since he did all this work on Tuesday we are not having any more brown outs and it has run all night.

Covered and smothered

Waffle house joke. We put a roof on the deck this weekend. Since the deck for the campers is a temporary, I tried building it without making any cuts. I put everything together with screws. I will be able to take it all back apart and re-use the wood.

Plumbing Problems

Well, I guess no matter where you live, the time will come that you have to repair a sink. That time was tonight for Rod. This morning when I came over to wake the girls up, there was water in the floor in the bathroom. So Camping World here Rod comes! Luckily, as repairs go.. this was an "easy" one and it only cost $3. We also bought the RV/Marine toilet tissue. I am sure most camper owners would not believe we had been using regular toilet paper for the first 3 weeks.

Generator Problems

The generator has been "stumbling" sometimes. It seems to be random and some tanks it will not do it at all. When it does this stumbling it almost always doesn't actually die. Rod has been saying he is going to get a fuel filter for it. However, last night was the first time since we have been running on the generator that something happened to cause it to not run all night. Not sure what time it died but when the alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. it was chilly in the camper. Luckily the low last night was only 48 so it didn't get too cold. This is Rod's new top priority!

Electricity (Almost)

CEMC said there was a 10 day waiting queue once we paid them for the electrical hook-up. We paid them on Tuesday and today (Thursday) they drilled the holes for all 5 poles and stood 3 of them up. This is great! We have been living here without utility power since October 26th. We run about 4 gallons of gas through the generator on days Brandy does not work from home.

Electricity

Rod had called CEMC, our electric company, and told them we were staying on the land. Their normal process is to not run electricity until there is concrete footers poured. Luckily, the guy at CEMC was understanding. Since we alreay had the well, building permit, horse barn, etc. he was willing to go ahead and run the electricity. He said the queue is about 10 days wait. We have to drop 6 trees before they will setup the poles. So, today to start our 10 day waiting period, I had to go pay them $4,315.

New Address

After getting the driveway permit approved and pulling the building permit the next step was to get an address. In order to get an address you have to notify the 911 commission and they are the ones who come out and decide on your address. I happen to be at the campers this afternoon when he showed up. He was an older man who has been around these parts for a good while. So he talked my ear off. He also had to know exactly where the front door was going to be. After he left it only took about an hour until the building department called me with the official address. Now as soon as we put a mailbox up (all the way at the road) we will be able to recieve mail other than at the P.O. Box I setup.

The deck is done.

Now to put a roof on it.

Now it is a double-wide!

We built a temporary 8X8' deck between the 2 campers on Saturday. Now we can walk between them without any steps. I will end up making it a covered deck soon. It cost around $240. I think I am pretty good at backing a trailer, but it took me 30 tries to get the campers lined up square with the deck.

Tori helped and did 90% of the deck screws for me after I had everything fastened down.

$8,844.40

Taxes - WOW. This week started off with all of Tina's chickens on the loose. We have spent every morning before work and school tracking down and catching chickens. The dogs have gotten 5 of them and 15 have been recovered. There are still a few more missing. The week ended with Rod coming back from his trip to find camper #1 was out of propane (which means out of heat). Not too big of a deal because we were staying with my parents. Today I went to apply for out building permit. Our county has development tax of $3,750, a residential construction tax of .60 per square foot (all under roof including porches) and an adequate facilities tax of $1.00 per square foot. The grand total for the building permit was $8,844.40. However, we now officially have the permit to build!

Driveway Permit

I called on Tuesday to ask the county building department what I need to pull the building permit. The first step is the driveway permit. I called the highway department to request the permit. After giving the map/parcel information on the land they took my phone number and said they would get back with me. Today they called and said that it was approved. From here they will notify the building department and now I can go pay my fees and pull the permit.

The Roof

The builders have talked us out of doing a metal roof. We have not seen an actual quote for it yet, but they all 3 claim it will cost 3 times as much. A metal roof would look good on our home design, but a brown colored shingle will look just as good. Fire protection would be the only real reason to go with a metal/tin roof at this point if you can replace a shingle roof 3 times for the cost of a metal one. I will just have to NOT catch the woods on fire.

Week without Rod

This week Rod is out of town. I am not sure about staying in the campers alone with the kids yet. So I have decided to go stay with my parents until he gets back on Friday. This means spacious rooms, lots of hot water, and home cooked meals. I also took this opportunity to use a insect fogger in the campers to try to get the ants under control. After I picked the kids up from school today we went to the campers and took all the food and clothes out, set off the bug bombs and left. Tomorrow morning when we feed all the animals I will open the windows and let it all air out. I hope that this combined with the cool weather will finally get rid of them for good. Then I might be able to cook :-)