WE HAVE THE POWER!

So it actually happened. We have power AND everything we wired works like it is supposed to.

We had our struggles but we worked through them and it is so AMAZING to be able to turn on a light when it gets dark. Or better yet... we don't need to use all battery powered tools and now it doesn't matter that the generator can't power the chop or table saw! We now have the ability to use all the equipment that requires power!

After we passed the electrical inspection we still had one small task to complete before they could pull the wire. Clearly we did get it done BUT we have learned that many times small tasks snowball into big jobs. We had to install a pull rope in the conduit from the street end to the barn end. Simple enough.....or was it? You never know how easily something will go until you try but if I am writing about it you know it wasn't easy.

We got all set up with our plastic bag tied to a really long spool of lightweight string at the barn end and the generator running a shop vac at the street end.

The plan was to vacuum the bag dragging the string from one end to the other. After that we would connect the string to the heavier pull rope and get it into place. Sounds simple. We have already done it once for the power conduit to the well. Only this time it is really long AND the freshly installed conduit was run over by a 70,000 lb cement truck with unknown possible damage. See the post about that giant debacle HERE. Everything started off really good. When Mr. Dometastic started the vacuum the bag was ripped out of my hand and I couldn't keep up with the line spooling out. It is a similar feeling to catching a large fish deep sea fishing.

Then it just stopped. Just like fishing I would pull it back a bit and let it go again. Mr. Dometastic was getting water out the other end. We gave up and pulled it back out and there was 1/2 a gallon of water in the bag. Last fall when we dug the last section of trench there was one section that seemed to collect water so we decided that must be where our problem was. We needed to try to vacuum out that area. A garden hose worked really well to remove a lost metal disk in the conduit so we thought it would be a good choice as a makeshift vacuum attachment. To read that post click HERE. It took some time to get it in the correct spot without being able to see what we were doing but it did work. Lucky for us the low spot was only about 15 feet from the street end. We emptied several gallons with our hose attachment.

The water must have collected from condensation over the winter and when we started to vacuum the bag it all ran down the conduit to the lowest point. After the water seemed to be out we set our selves up again with a new smaller bag. We hoped a smaller bag piece wouldn't get stuck full of water. Several times we tried but there was no suction and we still heard water gurgling in the conduit. We spent about 4 hours emptying water and trying to get the line in with no more progress than a giant puddle on the ground. Our friend came over with a bigger shop vac to see if more suction would get it through.

More power saved the day. Lucky for us the cement truck did not crush the conduit. There was one unlucky and unwilling participant in this 5 hour long job. We sent a poor little field mouse on a wild white water ride down a 400 foot pipe only to be sucked out the other end and into a shop vac. He was rumpled, wet and disoriented but ran off into the woods just fine. Maybe he even enjoyed it. People pay money to go to water parks and be flushed down dark tunnels.