Siding and Electricity Plans

We've been feeling an urgency to get the insulation on the parapets covered. We'd talked with a siding supplier months ago and finally called them out for an estimate. The guy will give us two bids; one for the parapet, and another for the exterior walls, which we're not ready to do anything with because there's work to be done first.

The salesman liked the house. He and his trainee asked lots of questions and they were impressed. Because we're just a little different from the type of house they usually work with, he couldn't give us a complete estimate yet, but he took plenty of measurements and even took some pictures so he could take it all back to the boss and talk about it. We're expecting the quotes within days.

I also met with an engineer from the electric company this afternoon. He said that they can run a "secondary line" from the pole 200ft (not 100ft like we'd originally been told) to the breaker box. There are options from here and that's what I will need to talk with the trenchless drilling company before we will know what we want to do.

Because of the 200ft limit, they can run the line from the pole we currently have a meter on. They can also run the line underground for us, but if they do, it'll be with a backhoe and that would drastically tear up tree roots from one of our prize oaks (in fact, it's the best oak on the property). We don't want to do that.So if we want them to run the line underground for us, we'd want another pole added that would get the line away from the roots of the large tree.

If the trenchless guys can run the line for us, we might want the new pole anyway, just to avoid having to deal with the electric line to the building we're living in now; and we have a septic tank over there too. A new pole gets it all away from that. However, if the electric company brings in a backhoe, we'd be tearing up part of a concrete slab in the new location. From either pole, there's a phone line and a water line that we'll be crossing.

All around, I'm hoping we can go trenchless. I'm also hoping it's not too expensive.

So our next thing to do is to get one of the guys from the horizontal drilling company out here. They both live in our little community, but so far, we haven't gotten them on-site yet. I'm feeling the urgency to get this done so that we can get the work done and move on. It's time to move on.