House Project: Backup Generator, Telephones, Water, Security

I haven't made any mention of the house project since January 4. That's because we have been waiting on a lot of stuff.

Backup Generator

The backup generator wouldn't run. This turned out to be:

1. Too much LP gas pressure. The LP gas company installed a regulator on that line.

2. It had the natural gas jets in it--although that was probably not a direct problem.

It now starts up when grid power cuts out. Excellent!

Phones

It took a while because of snow, but Frontier Telephone at least ran a temporary phone line to the house. (When the ground thaws, they'll put it underground.) Over the weekend, I bought a new 2.4 GHz cordless phone, and installed it. No dial tone. At first I thought the battery just hadn't charged enough, but no, it turns out that the problem was more serious.

The network interface box that the phone company puts on the side of the house did not have the house phone wiring connected. I called them up, and found out that apparently two entirely different service calls were required--one to run the cable and screw the network interface box to the house, and someone else to plug the wires into the connectors. I hope that this is a union jurisdiction matter; the alternative is that someone is hopelessly stupid.

Water Filtration

The 5 micron and 1 micron filters have arrived. The housing in which they will sit have not. Until this arrives, I am reluctant to drink the water.

Water Tank

The Grundfos pressurization pump kept shutting down, and the Alarm LED came on. It turned out the float in the 1400 gallon water tank that tells the well pump whether to run or not had fallen to the bottom. Consequently, there was no water in the tank. The Grundfos correctly identified a "no water" problem, and protected itself.

I suspect that the remarkably brown water may have been because we were draining the bottom of the tank. It may well be that once we start using the water on a regular basis, all the stuff at the bottom will get washed out and caught in the filters.

Drainage Issues

My wife and I got ourselves thoroughly cold and muddy digging some draining channels in a rainstorm a few weekends ago. Everything is now draining nicely.

The "river runs through it" problem of the garage mystified the concrete guy, because the slope of the front driveway was more than building code required. It appears that the problem was that we had a remarkably heavy and horizontal rainstorm, and water was accumulating at the front of the door faster than it drain away down the driveway. The solution is to add another drain across the concrete right in front of the door. I'm told that this is already done. I've haven't been up there recently to check.

Security

The builder erected two stone cairns on either side of the driveway, and there is now a steel cable that runs between them. This was a cheaper and less visually obtrusive solution than a gate.

My theory is that the vast majority of burglars are teenagers looking for an easy score of fenceable goods. With this cable locked across the driveway at the bottom of the hill, 90% of all burglars are going to say, "I either have to walk up the hill, hope that there's something work stealing, hope that there's no one home who is going to chase me off with a gun, and then have to carry the stuff down the hill--which will attract attention. I'll go look for an easier target."

Those that have a 4WD could go up the side of the hill instead, but this attracts attention in a way that driving up the driveway does not. I think it also likely that most of the amateur burglars out there are driving a Chevrolet Vega, a Yugo, or a two wheel drive Japanese pickup. None of these are going to make it around the gate.

Last house project entry.