Into the Woods

I planted 55 pounds of daffodils last fall. I scattered them in little clumps all around, front and back. They bloomed late, but they did well.

While the drywall crew is working, I’ve tried to catch up on some of my outdoor work, including hauling in some compost, planting more grass and clover, feeding and mulching the arbor vitae trees, and so on.

Here are the electrical boxes on the house’s side wall. The box on the right is the meter base. The big box in the middle is a transfer switch. It’s a code-compliant way of connecting the house to a generator during a power failure. The reason the box is so big, I think, is that it’s designed to transfer 200 amps under full load. As the electrician explained it to me, if a switch is closed slowly while under a 200-amp load, electrical arcing could melt the switch. So the switch is designed to open and close very quickly. When you pull the lever, it cocks a heavy spring. Then the switch release fires, and the switch opens or closes very quickly. The box on the left is a breaker box for the heat pump. Also, it’s from the box on the left where a heavy cable runs indoors to the indoor breaker box, which also is a 200-amp box.

After the drywall crew is gone (Monday?) I’ll post some interior photos. I’ve been in touch with people who’re planning to build this house (one in California, and a couple in Canada) who’d like to see more clearly what the interior looks like. The interior is hard to photograph with the lens on my camera, but I’ll do my best to do that next week.