The electrician came back this morning to finish up the job, adding a couple of 20A outlets. I had requested three, but only two were installed, leaving me with a 30A space on the panel in case I want to put in a 220 outlet for a dryer or stove in the cabin.

I will very rarely, especially in summer, use the full 30A in the rig, so if the two 20A outlets aren’t enough, I can always tap into the RV amperage via the exterior outlet. Why waste money and resources on an outlet I probably don’t need? I was actually thinking about how I could modify the panel down the line for a dryer and the electrician was obviously thinking along the same lines. If he had put in the other 20A, I would have essentially wasted the last 10A.

So here are my 20A outlets:

Now, notice something different in the breaker box?

Last night, there were what felt like 50 billion (I know, I exaggerate) comments and horror stories about electricians wiring a 30A RV outlet with 220V, like a dryer or stove outlet, and there was at least one mention of my 30A outlet being on a double breaker, which would indicate that my outlet was wired incorrectly. I wasn’t too concerned because I never plug in anywhere without checking the wiring. I was going to wait for the outlets to go live and then check voltage, polarity, and connections, confident that the electrician would be out promptly to correct any problems.

But when I came by to check out today’s work, I had a single 30A and two 20A breakers. So I’m thinking the electrician might have initially wired the 30A outlet incorrectly, realised his mistake, and fixed it. Anyway, it looks correct now and we’ll know soon enough if it is!

The electrician emailed this afternoon to say that he had requested service from SaskPower, but there was a problem with my land description and he couldn’t get them to come out. The issue is that my neighbour gave them the wrong land description (mine), so SaskPower thinks there’s already service on my lot. Because I was able to correctly cross-reference my land description with title information, SaskPower says that this is an easily fixable clerical error. They are sending my request for service over to the technical department, who will call me to give me an idea of what day they can come by to install my meter!

Now, if the rain can hold out another few hours, my gravel pad should be done tonight. All appendages crossed for that!

My electrician asked me to be on site at 8:30 this morning, so I moseyed over around 8:10 thinking that I’d have at least an hour to clean up the yard. Ha. He rolled in at about 8:15! He discussed what he was going to do and where he was going to set up everything and I left him to it. I checked in on him at 10:30 and 1:00 and he was making good progress. When I went back around 3:15, he was gone and the work not quite where I expected it to be, but the important part was done. I imagine I’ll get an email from him tonight.

Here’s the first thing he did, installing posts and plywood to create a structure on which to screw the breaker box and outlets. This was the cheapest way to do it for now and I can later move the breaker box into a building if I so choose. The panel looks very neat and he used pressure-treated posts for the legs. I’ll be using posts like these for my clothesline.

Here’s a closeup of the trench. The metal thing sticking out is the ground. It has to be about 2′ down.

Because of the gravel pile, he was unable to get onto my property from Main Street and was very glad when I told him that there is a rear access through an easement. His trailer is unhooked because he had to go back to town for some conduit that his supplier forgot to ship him last week. I’m glad said conduit did arrive!

BTW, I plan to bring Miranda back to Haven through this rear access because the driveway entrance is so narrow and it takes a lot of work to get Miranda aligned just so to back her into it. Plus, why back in 100′ when I can drive in? 🙂

Here is the ‘household’ socket into which SaskPower will plug their meter. It put it on a board that is attached directly to my power pole. You can see a conduit cover running down and into the ground.

Here’s the board with the electrical panel. See that thing down to the right of it?

A 30 amp outlet. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY.

Close up of my pretty exterior-grade electrical box in oh-so-sexy contractor grey.

I wanted a box I could lock. It is very difficult to open! You have to push the tab to the left and get it to fit through the door slot.

I only have the main 100 amp breaker and the 30 amp breaker. We had discussed three 20 amp outlets as well, so that’s why I’m a little confused tonight. Not a big deal for now as I can always plug things into the RV exterior socket for now, but I really want a 20 amp outlet for my friend L to plug into when he gets here. I’ll see what the electrician says.

Close up of the breakers. Top say 100, bottom says 30.

Next step is that he will call SaskPower and tell them that I am ‘site ready’ and they will come and run cables down the pole to my household socket and plug in a meter. SaskPower says it will take at least 10 business days, but my electrician says it shouldn’t be more than two or three. We shall see…

I can’t believe that this is finally happening! Boondocking for most of 2013 was empowering, pun intended, but I’ll be glad this summer to not have to worry about powering the new internet booster, charging the laptops, using my external monitor, etc.

Back in February, I finally got an electrician to come out here to give me an estimate on getting power to my property. We spoke about a mid-May installation, then the weather got unseasonably good, so I asked for late April, but early April worked better for him, and I got all excited about moving back to Haven early.

Well, it’s late April and there’s still no date on power going in. 🙁 This is not the electrician’s fault. He has been fabulous about staying on top of this and I have no reason to believe he’s trying to get out of the job. The problem is the weather keeps regressing.

He emailed this morning to ask me to call SaskPower to open an account with them for a new service. He thought he could do all of that for me, but SaskPower requires that a new connection request be made by the person who will be paying the bill. He gave me the phone number and the instructions to get through the menu maze, so I got a live person in the correct department in under 15 seconds.

I had to give my land description since we don’t have addresses here and got yet another hurdle. For some reason, they have my neighbour as having service on my lot! His lot and mine used to be one and were subdivided, so that could explain this problem, although there’s also the possibility that the RM (‘town office’) gave him the wrong info seeing as my neighbour is a tenant, not landowner. I gave them another land description provided on my certificate of title and that was helpful to confirm that I am indeed the owner of my lot and that the issue with the neighbour is a clerical, not legal one.

So the SaskPower lady put me on hold for a minute to speak to a supervisor. She came back and said that they have people whose sole job it is to sort out issues like these (!) and that we could go ahead with my application. I gave her my legal name and mailing address, confirmed the service going in (100 amps), and that there is likely not going to be any cost for me to have the meter put in because I have a pole and lines right at the property.

The next step is to schedule the installation of the meter. My electrical guy can do that. I provided SaskPower with his name and telephone number and they gave me a notification number to give to him to make his call easier. There’s a 10-business day delay between the call and the installation of the meter.

I was then asked if I had called ‘SaskEnergy’ and I thought, oh no, another hurdle! It turns out that they are the ones who provide natural gas service, which I am not dealing with this year. So there’s nothing to do on that end, nor am I having a telephone land line put in by SaskTel.

I am beyond ready to get back to Haven, but with the weather yo-yoing as it has, it would be stupid to go back without power on the lot. Never mind the giant pile of gravel I’m still working on…

Yay for my electrician, though! I am really pleased to have found him and I suspect I will have more work for him in the future. And yay for SaskPower as they have been super easy to deal with, a far cry from my experience with Hydro-Québec.