Powah! No need to be an ESA licensed yearly membership dues Master Electrician.

25KVA transformer on the right, on a 7200Vac line, feeding two customers.
My pole on the left. Hydro vehicles to install:
Vehicle 1: basic 4x4 crew cab hauling big wire spool for pol height & underground pull. 3/0 wire.
Vehicle 2: Big diesel beast hauling pole trailer and sporting hydraulic auger & pole lift. The augering was done in advance by the guy who hates his life and everyone else.
Vehicle 3: Bucket truck. 25KVA replaced 5 or 10KVA single on a short old pole. They lifted high the live line running over the old pole and swapped the new taller pole underneath. My 3/0 guage wire runs down my pole and is direct buried through the existing sand toward my 181' DBII 4: tubing. There is direct burial at the other end and then up to my meter base. The seasoned HydrOne linesman said the new #6 copper wire bonding my meter base box indirectly to neutral would not stand a chance if a hot wire contacted the inside of the meter base. It would vaporize before the breaker at the transformer, and thus it does nothing. Back in 2024 neutral was just connected directly to the meter base, which makes sense.
Why The ESA (Electrical Safety Authority) is just money hungry sinecure hiding behind safety:
1. Direct burial in sand is fine. They had me run inside tubing from the meter base onwards
2. ESA wanted 4/0 (much thicker) wire after the meter base while the major hydro length is 3/0. Who is right? Hydro since it works fine.
3. The ground wiring ("bonding" wire) in the meter base is insufficient for the 1 in a million chance it sees current: A mistake on both ESA and Hydro's part.

Drywall lift bought years ago on sale at Princess Auto. 4 days rent these days would equal what I paid: $200. Bought two rolling, stackable, 6' scaffold on sale also.

Caddy. I can carry a 4x10 sheet at any angle without fear of snapping, and I can grind the corners in the dirt or on a floor to pivot and not do any damage...Works Great. Glued-screwed-solid

Electical Safety Authority approved my service entrance so Hydro showed up next morning at 8AM..I appreciate the speed. I don't appreciate the conscious carelessness in killing a 12" base tree(60' tall) next to the pole which is now my liability and responsibility. Ripped the now tarred scar and pulled out a whole main root too. Took me an hour just to scheme how I will drop it. I am not a stranger to operating heavy equipment and this is conscious incompetence too early in the morning to fault alcohol. It is men with this mindset who beat their wives and expect the woman to understand why. It will be good to have power to run lights and slam the mitre saw

Delivery guys above & beyond, placed it on my deck. 90 minutes to get it in. With shims I have 1.25" door swing clearance above subfloor. Because of the left sidelight, even though the wall is 13" thick, the doors swings almost fully open! Added an electric door lock now.

Drywall from Home Depot Pembroke. They had a logistics snafu and summoned Raj from rural Punjab (now Barrhaven in Ottawa) to deliver on 40' flatbed with Moffat. He was fun and enjoyed the drive so we chatted a bit. Gone are the days when HD delivered up my way only on Fridays.

Hey Angus, here's a two man job: R40 attic. One person feeds the blower while the other wanders with hose. Blocking the outflow freezes the hose solid..

Drainage sump: stainless washing machine drum enrobed with rocks and wrapped in geotextile.

Drainage sump: bundled up and topped with 2'x2.5' patio concrete tile

Propane conduit in open trench

Propane conduit depth is over 2' from top of HDPE tube

Propane conduit half buried and topped with caution tape

The Case 210b rad begain badly leaking within $1850 of paying for itself. Then I found the housing rubbed a half inch score in the top. Through the miracle of brass versusd aluminum/plastic rads, I soldered a flat of copper salvaged from a garbage picked water heater. Good again! (That vertical cyclindrical thing on the left is a downdraft oil bath air cleaner: oily but way more effective than modern paper filters. I love it)

McGregor septic tank. Insulated the top with R=10.6. Tires were 1' riser place-holders The tank is so heavy an excavator cannot lift it. Delivery truck has a boom that is counter-balanced by the entire length of the truck. The tank has an excellent outflow filter.

Kurt Stewart in command. Work spanned two half days. Infinite quick dig power

My perc coefficient T was near 1 (measured by me) so I'm really happy with a filter bed 3' below ground and below where most roots go. The bed is 4x5M and the septic sand is near identical to my own sand, so I have a 70' deep filter bed, really. Good for my lifetime.

New build partner and mouser: Ruthlessness of Putin and the speed of a grifter spying grant money.

Quickie custom fit window carry handle: even heavy windows are a solo carry.

Window install is too easy: noose around the J trim, hauled up with block & tackle from the truss overhang. I had always thought I needed to find a helper.

Before backfill: Well water to house: 1" I.D. line & power covered in foam and then 1.5' wide strip of plastic sheet.

Over 7 foot deep trench for line from well to house, under foundation. 2 days work.

Over 7 foot deep trench for line from well to house, under foundation

Case210b born 1958: 16 foot digger. Still works. Put $7000 into it all in, and $5000 of work out of it, so far. A useless little toy costs $30K new. I rebuilt the boom cyclinder but dip & curl leak. Motor running clean & strong

11 foot tall woodstove stack supported, anchored, sealed.

250psi air at 1000CFM is the secret to clearing what the drill bit liberates. Bentonite, sand, bits of rock. The machinery is loud and always running so hearing protection obviates easy communication, so the two drillers working together rarely speak because they "know the drill".

30" wrench hacked onto hydraulics and used to unscrew one drill shaft from another during extraction.

Pull that crescent lock back and the drill tip + whole drill shaft length drops to the bottom. Do not!

Layout of 20' long 6" diameter, 1/4' thick steel casings paired will drill shafts. Casings are welded as they go down using 7018 rods at ~180amps. A sacrificial ring drill bit resides at the leading tip of the casing and driven by the drill bit: this coupling unlocks when the driven drill bit is reversed

Understand all the functions and get the understanding of the controls for free

DM650 rear view

The pace truck has a massive 16" tall rectangular tank full of water. Brilliant design is stable on the road and offers an equipment and casing deck above. Heavy!

Hydro trench partial fill. Close to 12" pure sand.

Code requires 3" sand over conduit. This handy screen technology works great. Only roots/ pine needles /branches to filter

Hydro trench 28 inches deep, for 4" diameter DB2 tubing (stick=24", stick_extension=4")

Hydro trench from meter 28 inches deep

I paddle across the river sometimes for a swim, a snifter of wine, and a read

Spent 5 days on this when I should have been working on the house. Had to.

7cuyds of rocks at the beach. Took 23 hours of zip time

Steve Cohn & sons: basement pour over 2.5" foam. Mix truck operator Bart commented to me as sounds of work came from the basement, "best crew in the Ottawa Valley"

Gas powered polisher final run around 3PM after concrete arrival 7AM. I don't feel worthy.

Charlie Clinton Construction: Much work went into this standing seam roof and they did a great job. No exposed screws to think about. The panels cover 14.75" wide but are half the weight by length relative to a regular sheet roof. The next ridge locks over the previous lower ridge next to the hidden screw strip. Roofing was bought and shipped direct from Steeltile manufacturing in Inisfil Ontario - much apreciation to John & Roxy Maxey

Sheathing: 7/16" OSB with H clips and then Palisades underlay.

Whoa! These guys are fast!

Charlie Clinton Construction & crew: John, Martin & Amon

Phoenix truss package. Dumped in wrong spot (missed driver by minutes) so I spent 4 hours stacking here.

Walls next to floor pentrations (stairs to basement) can use some help. Layers of geotextile form what civil engineers call "engineered soil". The cloth breaks angled near vertical shear lines of slipping soil

Rsoil for 1 foot is 0.25, while Rfoam per inch is say 4. Placing a 4" apron here eliminates a window well. Not shown is a similar plastic apron buried near the surface tilted like an unbrella to shed water.

As if the building was planted there. Shaun Luffman of Luffy's ICF did me a solid :)

backfill day. Really only half a day. Darrell Lamirante is quick

Attic subfloor. Easier roof install, easy vapour barrier & insulation install, easy woodstove stack inspection & service, easy wiring and wet vent plumbing

2nd pour. Tree cutout to free a stuck reversing cement truck (ladder overhung deck was blocked by the tree). Since the mixer spun in the wrong direction to suck me under and crush me, I squatted on the deck while it turned and did the cut. Paid crew stalled, concrete pumper demurrage rate running, and concrete that wants to harden. When everyone was gone I dropped the tree with a 4 ton puller and digested it same day.

Interior bracing and vertical leveling

Exterior bracing

Ramp and outside of DIY T block - ribs replaced internal cut webs...prevent blowout.

Right angle scabbed 2x4
part of DIY T block fab. Thinner inner wall. (T stem = 6' core block, T bar is 8" core block

Temporary ledger support shim. I invented this but I'm sure it's been done before.

Bypassing Burmon Hangar's seemingly failed design with a temporary ledger. Near the end of the build I discovered how to drill even into webs perfectly...a trick even Burmon does not know.

Scaffold system ready for walkway boards

Toward last pour - June 8

First pour june 2nd

BurkesRd219 LuffysICF Vid 1
BurkesRd219 LuffysICF Vid 2

30 second promo vids for LuffysICF

Ready for first pour - May 29

ICF begins (20mm vertical rods in drilled holes in foundation. Done after first course of blocks placed versus before, so no interference with the webs) - May 14

Footers poured + gravelled in & out with submerged 4" perf clad drainage tubing peripheral to footers (useless but code) - May 12

G.P.Splinter

Stone slinger

Footer forms with 3/4 gravel - May 7
Foot forms

Footer forms - May 6, 2025

Excvation 2024. John Deere 310G with zoom boom, auto level, and float. Mfg date 2023. It became a part of me.

Southeast corner. Twine strung high across dig site with tassles hanging over the corners.