It’s been a while since the last post and for that I do apologize.  We have, surprisingly, not frozen to death and died up here in the snow, on the contrary, we are quite cozy in the RV – except we continue to battle with keeping the drain lines working in this cold weather.  I am not sure these RV’s were designed to handle the Canadian winters  – but for all we ask of it, it seems to do alright.

On the house front, I continue to plug away, and have been spending most of the past few weeks working hard on the electrical.  I had to wire up a 30A generator inlet plug, so we can push power from our generator into the off-grid inverter and start getting our batteries all charged up and commissioned.  This was quite a bit of an endeavour on it’s own but that is a story for another day.  I keep my “coles notes” of electrical code books handy, and must say you cannot refer to it too often.  They really specify every little detail with regards to how to run the wiring – which is great, if a little overwhelming at times.  I’ve made a few mistakes so far and had to undo, and redo a bunch of work, but I guess thats what happens when you are doing things for the first time.

A while back, I finally got up the energy to break through the frozen ground and dig a hole to bury our grounding electrode, so that is finally squared away and I can get to work running the ground wire into the electrical service panel inside the house.

We also got one of our two gas fireplaces, and I managed to fit it into the framed opening nicely, though the installation instructions certainly leave a lot to be desired.

Today, we had our electrical rough-in inspection (done by the ESA), which has to be passed before we can start insulating the house.  The inspector was here for about a half hour, checking various outlets and whether the cables were secured correctly, and finally reviewed our electrical service panel.  He recommended a few quite minor changes, but otherwise approved our rough-in work – very exciting news (even better to pass the inspection the first time out!)  So after a couple small fixes (less than a days work) we are good to have the spray foam experts out to start foaming in the walls.

In the meantime I will have to start installing the vapour barrier on the bottom of the attic joists, and sealing it all up with “acoustical sealant”, so we can install the ceiling drywall, then have the ceiling cavity insulated!  Very exciting times, and what better way to start 2015 with power in our house!

Take care all – best wishes to everyone in 2015, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more updates!