Weather: Not Much Done This Weekend

Is this a recurring theme or what? We got very little done this weekend. This time, it was the rain. We got several inches of rain. It was cold and windy and we just weren't set up for working in it. I'm still trying to recover from being ill this last few days, and so I stayed inside.

I am doing some planning for the garage. I'm feeling an urgency to get that closed in so we can buy building materials and store them some place secure. So we need to get the utilities in and then the slab poured, and then we can get the garage framed in where necessary and the doors put in to secure it.

We met with a plumber over a week ago, but haven't heard back from him. I'll call him tomorrow to see what's up with that.

As far as electrical, I'm trying to plan for the future and thinking that if we (or some future owner) ever want to convert the garage into a bedroom or two, that we want the ability to add an additional circuit (or two). So I'm going to put a sub-panel in the garage. I'll have a feeder line from the main breaker box. Originally, I was thinking that 8/3 would work. This would support a 40 amp sub panel. Two 20 amp circuits could come off that, but now I'm thinking it might be better to plan for a little bit of overkill, so we'll go with a 60amp sub-panel, which I think will require a 6/3 feeder. I think that'll go inside a 1 1/2 inch conduit from box to box. From there, it'll be 12/2 for the individual circuits in the garage. That's pretty standard.

Bear in mind that I'm not an electrician, but I can read and I'm going through the NEC standards as well as coming up with initial plans. Talking them over with experienced electricians, I'll refine as necessary. I see no reason to hire an electrician for this kind of work, as we're on a budget and I feel reasonably comfortable with it. And I'm not too proud to ask questions.

I bought some schedule 40 conduit and hope to run some of it tomorrow. I have the day off, but most people have to work. I'm hoping that maybe I can get some of the errands done tomorrow that I normally can't do on days that I'm stuck at the office. Because of these errands, I'm probably not going to get a whole lot done with the house, but the planning is progress. We might be slow, but this gives us time to mull things over.