Nelson, the retired electrician running our “power main” from the pedestal to the house, showed up at 6:00am honking his horn. He was ready to go and we were working all night getting ready for him.

In the last couple of days we have built the pedestal (I’ll show you pictures once I can do a start to finish pictorial), arranged the electrician, arranged certification, met at the house with the power company and got approval from the owners of the properties where the Cement Utility Poles will be located, purchased 1,000 feet of 1/0 copper wire ($2 a foot at the cheapest place on the island where I bought it…home depot was $2.95 a foot and it was $3 a foot in Rincon), purchased the PVC pipe to run the wires in and arranged and dug a 3 foot deep trench from the our property line to the house to run the cables in. Also purchased galvanized pipe, ground wire, copper ground rod, couplings, PVC glue, Jet Line etc…

We worked all day yesterday and into the night. We were gluing the PVC pipes until 10:30pm last night under lantern light (the generator is too loud to run at night) so we could be ready for Nelson this morning.

We sucked some “Jet Line” through the pipe with a vacuum tied off the other end and pulled about 400lbs worth of wires down to the house. Once nelson finished up, he told me that he is going to get me my certification by Monday or Tuesday. I then have to take that certification to the Electric Company and apply for and pay for an electric meter. Before we have power though, we need power lines out to our property. I met with that guy yesterday and I am going to go to see him at his office in the electric company building in Aguadilla. There I apply and pay for 2 cement poles. So, we’ll have the ball rolling with both power to the pedestal AND power to the house from the pedestal. Stoked.

We didn’t finish running our CAT5 and Coaxil cable until about 3:30pm. It was hot today too…91 degrees with 80% humidity. Luckily, it didn’t rain yesterday or today though…our trench has been safe. By the time we wrapped up I ran down the hill to the neighbors valley and raided there mango tree (with permission). mmmm…. Puerto Rican Mangos! And there in our valley. :-)

I put the camera on a tree branch to take this video…but I cut my head off. Oh well, this was a one time thing.

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