{"id":1587,"date":"2014-03-15T08:15:24","date_gmt":"2014-03-15T16:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.PeaceCrops.net\/CSA\/?p=1587"},"modified":"2014-03-15T08:15:24","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T16:15:24","slug":"pulling-wire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.PeaceCrops.net\/CSA\/pulling-wire\/","title":{"rendered":"Pulling wire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pullinwire1SM\"<\/a>On to electrical! We’re finally at the stage where we are pulling wire for the cottage. It’s surprisingly physical work, pulling all that wire through all those little holes. As Ryan and Sleep were helping me, \u00a0Ryan mentioned that it would be that hardest part about being an electrician. But I know that no to be true, because electricians don’t pull wire… they hire electrician’s assistants<\/em> to do it! \u00a0I know this because my architect buddy Keith used to be an electrician’s assistant before he went to architecture school, and mentioned once how much work it was (and that he didn’t really learn much about being an electrician that summer, either).<\/p>\n

\"pullin_anthonySM\"<\/a>Speaking of architects, my friend Anthony Stoppiello came over to help pull wire for a day as well.\u00a0This guy is great; he’s community-minded, funny, collaborative, and has a lot of good architect sense. And he’s just plain nice. I hope that when I’m his age (72), I’m still helping people build houses and hiking in the mountains and playing frisbee football at my birthday party like he does. Besides being a good friend and a nice guy to have tea with, \u00a0he’s one of the other three architects in the county besides me, and he was the one who introduced me to the other two, Tom Ayres and Tom Bender. I’m lucky in that all four of us get along well, and the other two have also helped on my house in various ways- one hooked me up with a plumber, and the other let me borrow his scaffolding.<\/p>\n

It takes a surprising amount of wire for a 680sf house. I bought 500 feet of NM-B cable (Romex), and it turned out that I needed twice that much. These sort of misestimations are one of the reasons I’m not a contractor, I guess. And it’s not like my house is an electrical power station! I’m on solar power, and don’t plan on running a lot of electrical gear. But I do have a lot of outlets and switches and lights, to give flexibility for the power I am<\/em>\u00a0using. And that gobbles up a lot of wire.<\/p>\n\n\n