Nestled in-between drilling a hole in the stone facade of the house and running the wires inside is the power company coming to run the underground line from the transformer at the pole to the board that Brad built. I didn’t get to see any of this first hand as I was at work and Brad was able to take off to be present.
If you ever watched Green Acres you’d remember Eddie Albert’s character dragging out his soap box and giving a patriotic speech, out of nowhere a fife started playing. When OEC, the power company, arrived Brad expected to hear the theme of Green Acres to start playing. Don’t get me wrong, OEC is great. Brad and I have both dealt with the big corporate power company our entire lives. OEC is a much smaller cooperative. In our first dealings with them we couldn’t believe the difference. OEC has been wonderful to work with and so personable; something that you just get used to not having with big corporate.
The day started as three guys showed up just before 8am. Cue the music. Thing is all three arrived in their own trucks.
First task – boring a hole under the road. The machine hammered inch by inch a 4 inch diameter hole under the road.
Second task – running the wire from the transformer to the panel. The crew needed to pick up the really big spool of wire. Music. Problem – the crane on the truck decided not to work. So everyone stood around waiting for the company mechanic. Cue the music again – the mechanic arrived in an electric car.
Bad news – the crane couldn’t be fixed without going into the shop. Good news – another truck was on its way. Truck number 4 arrived – to lift the great big spool they sent the truck that normally lifts poles to install them. So after waiting around about an hour everything was back on track.
Once they pulled the line through the hole under the road it was time to bring it over. The machine put a slice in the ground, inserted the wire, and re-covered the slit all in one smooth motion.
It was definitely time to go. The overhead wire at the transformer was fried.
Time for to make the magic happen. Music again. It was way back in spring when we filled out the paperwork to go underground and to increase from 100amps to 320amps – now in October the 320amp meters were out of stock. (Somebody didn’t plan ahead.) Now what?
The simplest thing was to pull our existing meter from the dilapidated doghouse and put it in the meter pedestal on the board Brad built. When the right meter came in, they would come out and swap it. The crew disconnected the existing power. With all the hiccups of the day, there was success and the power is now underground with the overhead lines abandoned.
In case you’re wondering about the title – Can you count to 7? – on Green Acres all the appliances had a rating, Oliver and Lisa couldn’t turn on more than a total of 7 without blowing the generator.
I left off with rain washing the neat little mounds of dirt back into the trenches – a disheartening sight. Trying to stay optimistic, Brad thought that we could just bring the trencher back out, and have it re-clean-out the trenches. Simple – right?
Sunday was warm and sunny, everything should dry nicely – right? We discovered the hard way that clay does not dry quickly. Clay that is just the right (or wrong) consistency is difficult to work with to put it lightly. Brad lined the trencher up, and as he started, he nearly lost the trencher in the trench. It was all he could do to get this 900 pound earth eating machine onto solid ground. Mary grabbed a slab of plywood to cover the trench for somewhere for it to go, and it nearly broke through that. We got it back on solid ground and realized that this was not going to work. The remaining work would have to be done by hand, the ground was just too unstable and unpredictable from all the rain.
We hosed it off, and returned it to the rental company. There was so much left to do, and it felt impossible and defeating. There were sections that had partially filled back in, other areas that had never gotten deep enough, rocks, roots, and clay that made the trencher useless.
As defeating as it all was, we were past the point of no-return. The wire was ordered and on its way and the power company was paid to move the power to underground. Turning back now would be foolish, but going forward felt impossible.
There was nothing to it but to do it. So we slowly plugged away at it. Brad’s good friend Frank came to check out our problems and progress. Frank, being retired would pop in during the week and put an hour in here and there.
Before we got all the trenches finished – the wire arrived! This is what 400 pounds of wire looks like. Probably about 2,400 feet of wire!
Clearing the trenches was anything but easy. I told Brad that if we had had to do all this by hand – we would be staying overhead! Hard work, made it slow going, and we were in fear of trenches collapsing again once we had them cleared. Frank had the smarts to suggest that once we had a trench cleared, that Brad start running the wire in that trench. If it re-collapsed, bit deal, the wire was in it already. So that’s how we proceeded, one trench at a time. We had 7 trenches to take care of total, ranging from a few feet to over 100 feet long.
Since I was running the camera, there aren’t any of me inching my way across the driveway with the pick-axe, something my back later told me it did not approve of. We all put in our share of sweat equity, and Frank’s help was invaluable not only the labor itself, but the motivation he provided.
Plugging along we finished laying the lengths of wire in the course of a week.
This is a tree root.
Next hurdle – a spaghetti of wires that had to fit through conduit and make a bend. Industry specs say that you can fill the conduit 60% full. Brad had calculated that he would fill something like 59.8%, piece of cake, right? Um – sure.
4/0 aluminum
23 wires ranging in size for 3/0 to #10 need to fit through here!
Each conduits has 4 wires coming up it, except one for a future garage.
Thankfully we worked on this in warm weather making the wire and coating more pliable. Still there were lots of prayers said and expletives dropped. While 60% sounds like apiece of cake, 40% adds up fast with all the tiny voids remaining when you pack cylinders next to one another. Then we were working with 3/0 to #10 wire (nothing tiny). The sheer size of some of the wire made it difficult to work with. Painstakingly Brad wiggled and shoved each wire. The 4/0 did not go through the conduit with all the other wires. It was on the run to the main house. We would get to deal with that later.
The rough lines were laid in all the trenches. Brad wanted to bore through the stone while we still had power at the house to avoid running extension cords across the yard, that meant getting the hole bored before the power company came. After doing some serious research Brad found a diamond core bit to carefully put a hole in the lannon stone. After about an hour of drilling he made it through the stone. He did wear hearing protection, but should have had knee pads since he heard something pop and is dealing with a sore knee 2 months later.
Getting the wires into the house happened AFTER the power company came, but because I’m focusing on the house right now I’m going to mess with the time line and continue on about wiring the house for now. The power company is a story in itself.
Getting the wires into the house was almost more challenging than the main panel. We were dealing with the largest wires of the project. For cost effectiveness Brad ran aluminum to the buildings since it is cheaper than copper, but since there is more resistance with aluminum a larger size is required for the same load. So a 4/0 aluminum carries about the same load as 3/0 copper. (180 amps vs 200 amps, and then there is an exception in the code allowing for use of 4/0 aluminum (which carries 180 amps) for 200 amp service on dwellings.)
Don’t get me started on the numbering scheme makes my head hurt. Anyhow, here is a quick explanation as I understand it from Brad. 4/0, 3/0, etc is read as 4 aught. From him (I don’t know electrical) they (electricians back in the 1800’s who invented the numbering scheme) eventually ran out of numbers, because the original sizes get bigger as the number gets smaller. So #10 (10 gauge) is smaller than #8 (8 gauge). Apparently wire got bigger after the numbering scheme was invented and in heavy use, the industry hit 0 at some point and there needed to be a way to identify the sizes larger than 0 (which is big not small). The larger wire doesn’t follow the same numbering scheme, because 4/0 is bigger than 3/0. Confused? Me too! That’s why I was the trained monkey doing the labor and not in-charge of figuring any of this out.
Anyhow – thankfully October had some nice warm days to work with the big 4/0 wires. They did not want to cooperate. More prayers, expletives, and more prayers, and having to let it sit overnight and come back at it the next day. Finally – success! Hallelujah!!
Its been a few months since I posted. We’ve been busy with not just the house, but life, and time got away from me. So here’s what we’ve been up to.
Since we are doing as much of the work ourselves as we can, it is a bit slow going. These projects that involve construction or electrical work are so much more involved and detailed than I ever dreamed. Construction and electrical work is Brad’s domain, I am the trained monkey helping with grunt work.
We finished off the big panel for the panel and meter for the underground electrical.
Brad finished getting all the supplies for the board and dry fitted it before installing to be sure he liked how it looked before it went up. Yes, aesthetics matters even with power.
This didn’t go as fast as you might think. The planning of everything took quite a bit of time, then drilling out the holes in addition to finding the pieces. With COVID odd ball items are out of stock or back ordered, making getting everything a challenge. Who would have thought that breakers would be so hard to get.
In the midst of this we celebrated Independence Day, Brad hosted a 2 week virtual work seminar in the house, we went on vacation, celebrated Brandon’s 18th birthday, and attended his Eagle Board of Review (new Eagle Scout in the family!). We also moved our oldest back to college, and did a bit of canning. (phew)
As we did work and had some R & R we made decisions on how much power to put in each of the buildings. We did measurements and Brad put in his order for wire – lots and lots of wire.
With everything in place we rented a trencher and started ripping up the yard. The wire was due to come the same day – so Brad and his friend Frank got to work, while I waited for a big truck to drop of a pallet of wire.
Brad had an observer that creeped him out.
Are raven’s a good omen or a bad omen? Whether there is any meaning to a raven hanging around or not, it was a little odd and creepy to have this bird just hanging around and not leaving. We both went up to it several times. It would back away, but not leave completely. While we believe that God is in control and fate or luck has nothing to do with it, the bird’s presence was still unnerving.
Well – the FedEx truck dropped off the wire at the other house – 1 medium sized spool. Far short of the 400lbs of wire Brad was expecting. A call to the company revealed that the vast majority of the wire would ship on Monday (this was Friday). Ugh!
Brad found several tree roots and rocks with the trencher, that even as powerful as it is, it could not handle. He did as much of the trenches as he could, leaving spots here and there that would need to be touched up and we called it a day. Brad had hoped to be done in 1 four day weekend, there was no way that was going to happen with the delay in wire and the trench issues. Depressed and overwhelmed we returned the trencher and knew we had to figure out a way to get through the tough spots somehow.
There was no turning back now. The power company had been prepaid to do their part, the lumber, panels, fittings, and wire were bought and the vast majority were un-returnable.
Saturday was all rain. We went out to do a few measurements, and found that in several spots the dirt that the trencher had thrown out so easily was clay and was turning to slickly, slippery, squishy, mud and in spots was falling back into the trench.
Gonna end this post here. I’m already behind on posts, and I’m feeling like being climatic. Yes a very down beat, so not sure if climatic is the right term, but I think you get the point. Regardless, it was depressing. To see the roots (4 – 6″ across), baseball sized rocks & bigger (thanks to the glaciers), and invisible obstacles that impeded the mighty teeth of the trencher you’d be depressed too.
The last couple of weeks we started several small projects and finished a few, and found a little gem in the process.
Electrical upgrade
The current power setup has been around since the late sixties for sure. Given that it is 60 years old, it is a bit shaky. The power comes the transformer out on the road to the main pole with a yard light. From there it is distributed to the buildings. The “dog house” that protects the main breaker is a little weathered.
We recently lost power several times with what we believe is just the wind blowing. There is now enough sag in the wires that go from the pole to the barn that a moderate breeze (not difficult to come by on the top of a hill) makes the wires cross and trips the breaker. So, we decided it was time to do something.
Electrical wiring is an amateur passion of Brad’s. I kid you not. He points out in movies that they used the wrong switch, outlet, breaker panel, etc. The electrical code book is something he enjoys looking through (it would cure insomnia for me in a matter of minutes). And to top it off, he is good at it. So he set out to design a new service entrance and distribution panel. Once he had his designs finalized we contacted the power company, who approved them and approved out request.
We then had work to do. A tree needed serious trimming, and we needed to build the free standing back board for the service entrance. A friend who does some landscape work traded skilled labor with Brad. He came and bored the holes for the concrete pillars in exchange for Brad helping him with some wiring.
We borrowed my dad’s old cement mixer from my brother and set the posts waiting for the next phase of that project as the concrete cures.
Good-bye balcony
We knew even before buying the house that the balcony was in no condition to step on. With nice weather and before we got into anything big we decided that it was best to take it down.
That first step is a doozy!
Hidden Gems
We realized last fall that the deck on the South side of the house needed some TLC. Some boards were loose and the steps were questionable. This last week we finally got around to doing something about it. We decided that it was just easier to take it off and start over than to try to piecemeal new wood and nails or screws into old construction.
So we went to work systematically pulling the deck off. Since most of the wood seems good we thought that we could salvage it for assorted projects.
We discovered there was good reason the deck felt shaky.
We had had a hint of what was underneath, but once the deck was removed we discovered how good the hidden gem was.
Its the original steps off the side of the kitchen that match the stone of the house! How cool is that?
Every list of projects has to have a first. Somewhere in our extensive “to do” list was take down the old homestead. The simplistic charm it must have once had was hidden by the years of neglect. Inspecting the interior revealed that it had many purposes before it was left to stand as a sentinel and reminder of the past.
It began life as a small 3 room house for Iver and Myrtle about 16ft by 22ft resting on concrete blocks. There were 2 bedrooms one for Iver and Myrtle and one for the daughters and a communal room that was the kitchen, living room, and Clifford had a cot in the corner.
Some time down the road 2 additional rooms were added to the back expanding it to 26 by 22. It appears that one of the back rooms was an enclosed porch at some point in its life. A post still jutted out of the ground, a relic to steps up to the back door.
Our best guess is that before WWII the Lannon Stone house was built and the homestead would have been retired as the main dwelling or perhaps Iver & Myrtle lived in one house and one of their sets of parents lived in the new stone house. Regardless, over time it was retired as a main dwelling.
There is evidence that it became a workshop, hunting shack, and storage. Then there came a time when it was retired from even those purposes. It is unclear if its retirement came before or after the roof started to leak. With the leaking roof the floor followed at some point and with time, gravity, and probably the help of critters the contents tumbled and became scattered reminders of the history the house once held.
Interior wall last fall
workbench
game scale
ceiling
addition roof – gone
main roof failing
Interior wall this spring
When we bought the property, we inherited the homestead. Looking at its state, our insurance wanted to know what we intended to do with the the building. Our original plan was a year or two from now to have it tore down. Our college age son made us a proposal that was too good to pass up.
He and some friends would demo the house. We would pay dumpster fees, and pay them. He put a max on what they would charge. Not sure where life would take him in a few years, the time to say good-bye to the old homestead became now.
Armed with chainsaws, saw-z-all, various other tools, and a borrowed tractor they went to work. The old homestead put up a good fight. Contrary to how the roof, floor, and interior walls looked, the exterior walls were still fairly sturdy and didn’t want to go.
It didn’t want to go. They broke 3 tow straps trying to pull it down.
Pushing didn’t fair well. The addition complied, but not the original part.
Cut the structural integrity.
Remnants of the addition
After a chain saw, sledge hammer, and tractor finally the front relents.
With the front gone, the side begins to let go.
It stood for one last moment, and then after a collective “awww” from the crew it collapsed.
Foundation sill
The boys and friends rescued a steel beer can collection (through a window with a magnet on a stick). There were a few “treasures” that had managed to survive well enough to be deemed savable and were reachable from safe sturdy portions of the failing floor. The rest including the foundation sills that were hewen from single trees were loaded up into dumpsters, destined for their final resting place as the rest of the property awaits beginning a new chapter.
With the nice weather we’ve been busy. The pile of logs and down trees next to the granary/chicken coop had encouraged tall grass and weeds that had turned it into a wild . . . mess. So with clippers and saws Brandon and I started working on it.
As much as we were making progress, it was going painfully slow. Using a bow saw for several down trees does the job, but it is far from fast. Time for Brad’s favorite type of shopping – tool shopping. Asking a few friends for advice he pulled the trigger on a chainsaw. Living in the city a chainsaw is a nice piece of equipment to maybe have around. Looks like living in the country with this many trees in the yard and this many down trees to deal with a chainsaw is going to be a necessity.
Brad went with a Husky, a Husqvarna 16″ 130 Mark II. It got a workout making short work of the down trees. Brad had some time away from work to try his new “toy”.
There’s still work to do, but there is a marked difference. With some instruction and learning the dead trees around the granary/chicken coop need to come down next.
Firewood has been stacked in the barn to keep it out of the weather. Yet another brush pile has been formed. We are patiently waiting until the burn bans are lifted so we can have a much needed bonfire.
We also took some time and replaced the surveyor’s fiberglass poles with more visible fence posts. Standing looking out it is hard to know where the actual lot line is with 10 feet or so plowed and left in ridges and furrows that weeds have taken over. We spray painted the tops with fluorescent red and the fence posts no longer blend in with the weeds and greening grass.
When we are out for any length of time we bring Sophie with us. We are convinced she thinks she should have been a farm dog, or at least a country dog. She’ll have lots of opportunity to accompany us as we continue with projects.
Winter was long, as it typically is in Wisconsin. There are those days when everyone’s heart leaps for joy at the warmer temperatures, but those who’ve been here long enough know that Mother Nature will hit us with a dose of reality check in a day or two.
Life has been . . . interesting. 2020 started like any normal year, but it has become anything but a normal year. Our college freshman is home taking virtual classes in his room and our high schooler gets weekly packets to complete. Huge parts of society are in a holding pattern due to COVID-19. If you watch or listen to anything live you can’t escape hearing about COVID-19. So I am not going to recap anything about it here, other than life is toppsy turvy from it.
Our youngest and I started cleaning up some of the yard. The long tall dead grass is actually pretty easy to pull out with a rake. This makes finding all the branches and down trees easier to find. Brandon went to work with a bow saw and an axe cutting several down trees next to the chicken coop into manageable firewood. Getting that cleaned-up I am getting anxious to take the plywood off and open it back up.
The furnace ran – a lot – over winter. We had the heat set to 55. We wanted it warm enough that if the furnace did die we would have time to get it working again before pipes started to freeze. Our hypothesis is that it ran so much to heat the big cast iron beast before it could heat the house. GOAL #1: new heating system by October 2020!
The Homestead did survive the winter, surprisingly. The roof is in rougher shape than last fall, and the roof over the small addition in the back is caved in. Alex asked about him and some friends getting paid to tear it down for us. GOAL #2: Homestead a memory. We do want to save the weather vane, and if the stainless steel milk pails survive the demo those would be cool to keep too.
Brad and I went out with T posts and marked the 3 corners of the lot, and spray painted the tops fluorescent red. Something must be done with the perimeter. It was plowed and sits in furrows. That is far from pressing, but is on a to do list. Actually a find someone for hire to do list, since we don’t begin to have the equipment.
Speaking of equipment – we need to find a lawn tractor for out there. Loading ours in the trailer each time we need to mow out there will grow old fast. I’m not too keen on it, and we haven’t done it once yet.
Brad and I have spent time over winter planning what exactly we want to do out there. We’ve struggled with this (I’ve struggled for sure). It won’t be long and we will be empty nesters, so the need for a large house, and large rooms won’t really be there. But as we sit in our small living room with both boys and even 1 of the girl-friends, it is painfully obvious that the room is too small to be comfortable. The current living room isn’t much bigger than our present living room. So, in anticipation of the boys coming home for visits with girl-friends/spouses (some day) we’ve decided to add on. It sound’s crazy, I know, but lots of people do major changes to homes after they bought them.
This addition. We’ve decided to put a living room where the covered patio is and make it a little bigger. I think the family room should have the same footprint, Brad’s not so sure. Off the living room will be a smallish entry and an attached garage. The whole addition will be tucked away mostly behind the house preserving the aesthetic view from the front.
I’ve struggled with this design. Because the current living room will become a formal dining room. This puts the kitchen in the middle between the living room and dining room. Not exatly good flow, not to mention having people parade through the kitchen after a meal to go relax in the living room. But unless we want to sacrifice the view of the house, it is the best way.
The granary is a cute little building with a chicken coop built into a small hill. Right now I have no plans to put chickens in there again. Plans are that it will be my potting shed.
This cute little building has been neglected over the years since farming ceased here. Most of the windows are broken or missing, and the door to the chicken coop is nowhere to be found. The floor in the lower level chicken coop is concrete, and the upstairs granary is wood and still in good shape. I hated to see winter invade this building another year.
A friend of ours found salvage replacement windows, but as the days were getting colder and shorter there was no way we would have time to replace the windows before winter. Our best and only real options was to put cover the gaping holes.
I found some 1/2 price plywood and with the trailer as a workbench Brad covered the broken windows and doorway. One more project done.
Brad is a skilled amateur electrician. While he has no formal training, he has studied the codes, and has yet to encounter something that he can’t tackle. There are those who think they know what they are doing, but in reality should not own a pair of wire cutters. He is on the opposite side of the spectrum. Always overly critical of his work and meticulously paying attention to the details.
It is no surprise then that he studied the overhead wires that run from the pole to one building and then the next and so on. There were a few things he wanted to get taken care of concerning the over head lines before winter arrived.
First was to disconnect the Homestead. I was in disbelief that this sad little sentinel still had power going to it. He reached inside and turned a light on. Not sure if I should be impressed or scared that the light still worked.
First thing he had to do was turn the power off at the fuse box in the barn so he could work safely. He disconnected the bare (yes bare) wires from the Homestead. They had been spliced back together at least once. A thick scab of friction electrical tape gave testament to their having come down and being patched and put back up over the years. He took note of the vintage insulators as he clipped the wires off. Saving those insulators would happen another day. With no power he needed to work by the light of day. He knew this should be a simple job, so he started it after work, but that meant we were racing against the sun.
Then he clipped the feed to the Homestead off at the granary roof. He wanted to be sure that they were each snug enough on the granary and secure to the insulators so that the winter winds wouldn’t take them down, or make them cross. While that would probably give the neighbors a cool light show, that was something we wanted to avoid.
After securing them well he flipped the breaker back on. No snap, crackle, or pop. That’s always a good sign. And the light in the granary still worked. One more item to check off the to do list.
In Wisconsin Mother Nature ignores the calendar and sends winter when she feels like it.
We closed in late September and life kept us hopping and away. As October progressed on we knew that we needed to get everything ready for winter. Part of that process would be getting heat to the main house.
Good thing is that there is a working furnace. The unique situation is that the heat it produces runs through a big old monster that is older than both of us combined. This is one of those old octopus furnaces that kids have nightmares about and make basements in the movies so darn scary. Seeing one for the first time in real life I could see why. The big heavy cast iron doors like giant jaws and the duct work running in multiple directions like Medusa’s hair.
Brad was able to guess at the age of the LP furnace by the sticker of the local installer who had gone out of business some years ago. 23 years isn’t young for a furnace, but it is a youngster compared to the big beast.
The filter could use replacing, but the local hardware store didn’t have anything that would fit. So a good cleaning would have to do for now, and the right size was ordered. After cleaning a very dirty filter it fired right up.
A unique situation is that the air goes from the LP furnace into the big beast and then out to the duct work. The air has to heat up the big cast iron furnace before heating the house, not a very efficient system. Upgrading the heating system is a definite on the to-do list.
Related to the furnace is the LP tank. Brad wanted to have flexibility with the purchase of propane. So we bought a tank. The current supplier did not sell tanks, so out with the old and in with the new.
Lannon on the Hill 