We have a new helper up here at the ranch, my Dad came up from Florida to give us a hand making the final push for our occupancy permit.  We are of course happy to get the extra help!

We first tackled some more work on getting the solar racking set up – we used my hammer drill to make 1/2″ diameter holes, about six inches down into each block.  We cleaned all the concrete dust out the holes using the compressor, and then epoxied in some 7/16″ threaded rod into each hole, leaving a couple inches exposed.

You can see we also got the aluminium strut here now to mount the solar racks on.  These come in 10′ lengths, and we have some channel joiners to connect them together to create two seamless 50′ lengths across all the concrete ballast blocks.

We also got the last few boards installed into the porch ceiling and it’s great to finally have that job completed!

Unfortunately we didn’t get any pictures, but we also spent an inordinate amount of time moving the satellite dish for our TV service, from where I had temporarily mounted it on the ground, up to the side of the house below where our internet satellite dish is mounted.

More to come in the next few days as we continue to cross things off the list!