For one thing, it is starting get warm in South Texas, which calls for more creative solutions for keeping things cold, such as the cooler-inside-a-cooler technique.
Most of the time was spent wiring all of the electrical outlets and installing the electrical panel on the side of the container.
We also had to dig a 75' trench from the container to the power pole to bury the conduit with the four electrical wires pulled through the pipe. Hot and dusty work in the middle of the afternoon, and we managed to scare up our first snake on the ranch.
While bending down to connect the conduit, I also managed to sit on one of these:
Not cool.
After connecting the wires, installing the breakers, double-checking the outlets, and making sure we weren't touching anything metal, we tentatively flipped the switch on the main box and...nothing (bad) happened. We got power. Which we immediately used for one of the most important things in life.
We also had Mike from Allison Drilling come out to see where we could drill a water well. He brought his water witcher Roger, who walked around the property for a 45 minutes with his copper rods, looking for the "streams" flowing underground. They finally found a spot about 50 yards from the container along one of the ranch roads. The area needed to be cleared of cedar trees so he can get his drilling rig in place. Cutting cedar lasted about 30 minutes until the chainsaw broke and ended that project.
Finally, we started preparing for adding the bathroom addition by drilling into the container and creating the attachment points for the framed room that will be connected to one end of the cabin.
But it wasn't all hard labor, broken tools, sunburn, and cactus. We managed to drink a case of beer along the way, and even got our sun shower rig set up so that we could feel human at the end of the day with a hot shower "al fresco" -- Enjoy!
