Getting power

Lisa and Mark became my covid family. Two of us have health conditions that made us bad covid risks, and we must be very careful about exposure. Shopping is strictly online and curbside pickup. We eat the abundance of fresh vegetables from their huge garden and work on projects at both their house and at Mirabel.

The three of us drove all over Kitsap County while I was hunting for a lot.

We immediately measured out space for the house and garage, walked off what part of the yard would be fenced, and talked about the 26' geodesic dome we planned to install to provide year-round fresh vegetables and fruit.

They very kindly offered me the use of their lovely RV while I was building, but in order for that to work, at a minimum I needed power for it.

Fortunately Andre Harness has a Rolodex the size of Manhattan. A native of Port Orchard, he knows everybody worth knowing. He introduced me to Kurt Bezoenik, electrician extraordinaire, who guided me through the regulatory maze of getting power to the lot. Right after I arrived, Kurt and I met with Errol Burgos from Puget Sound Electric Errol had some creative ideas about how to get power quickly and without spending a fortune.

The plan was to pull cable from a 7,000 watt transformer located down the gravel road past my new driveway, instead of pulling from Wilson Creek Rd and having to install a new transformer. The only limitation was that we couldn't pull more than 400' from the transformer, so somehow I'd need to locate the meter and the main shut-off up close to the gravel road. Andre would trench down the middle of the gravel road to the big transformer, and Kurt and his crew would lay conduit back toward my driveway. The limit was about 380'.

Now that we had a plan, I began to firm up locations. Andre graded and leveled a big portion of the cleared area and installed a beautiful driveway and parking area for the RV.


To provide a structure for the electrical service to terminate on the property, I bought a cool little kit online from a Canadian company, and while waiting for it to arrive, Lisa, Mark, and I got busy laying gravel and paver stones to become the foundation for what would be Building #1 -- later to be named "The Cabin."


This terrific high point on the property became our new destination for Beer Hour.
 Finally the kit arrived on two large and very heavy pallets which Matt from FedEx, bless his heart, worked for an hour to get off the truck and onto the slight slope by the building site. We started the next morning.

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We put rebar through the stone into the earth to hold treated 4x4s to get the structure off the ground.
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Lisa served as project manager, and Mark and I wielded screwdrivers and hammers.
By the end of the first day, we had all the walls up.
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