Construction Journal Entry Week of 7/25/10

7/27-29/10 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I got a late start so I didn’t arrive until 2:30. I installed newly-filled propane tanks and then started the water heater in the trailer. After moving in and having lunch, I went to work and installed the last porcelain light fixture in the basement.

Next I started stringing the 10-2 wire I had left over from being too short for the water heater circuit to see if it would work for the dryer. I wanted to have it enter the service panel from the top, but I could see that because of the plumbing I couldn’t run it down from the ceiling. Instead I decided to run it under the floor and enter the panel from the bottom. I pulled the wire back out from where I had strung it.

Then I went to work on circuit 10 and strung a couple of wires. Before I quit for the day, I used an extension cord and installed a new ultra-sonic rodent repeller under the hood of the truck. We bought two of these repellers, one for the truck, and an additional one for the porch. I’ll keep one in the truck to prevent the plug wires from getting chewed up again, and I’ll wait a while to see how effective the one already on the porch is before I add another one up there. It seemed like there were fewer packrat turds up there and more mouse turds, but there were none right around the ultra-sonic repeller. It seems to work.

On Wednesday, I watered the sequoia trees while it was still cool. The trees seem to be thriving, although Bill is not growing much. There seem to be a lot fewer mosquitoes than last week. Even though the mosquitoes were pretty thick in June, they showed up late and now it looks like they are going to disappear early. At least I hope so.

I went back to work on circuit 10 and got some more done before Larry and Ted showed up for a visit. Ted hadn’t seen the loft staircase yet, so we had a nice visit while he checked out the progress. It was time for lunch and a nap by the time they left.

After lunch, I finished up installing most of circuit 10. I needed more parts to finish it up.

On Thursday I ran the wires for circuit 8 and then swept the porch off real good. I paid attention to the pattern of mouse turds and I decided to raise the repeller a little and aim it a little differently. I won’t install the second one until I am pretty sure of the effects of the first one. I left for home at 2:00.



Go to Next Journal Entry
Previous Journal Entry

Index to all Journal Entries
Go To Home Page

©2010 Paul R. Martin, All rights reserved.