Electrical challenges

This is the reason we haven't turned on the electricity at the house. If you look carefully you'll see cloth-wrapped wiring at the top of the box, circa 19...20's?? They did upgrade part of the wiring at some point, but they left all the old wiring in place, making things very confusing.



There's no cover for the box (and there are so many wires it would be impossible to close a cover anyway).

The other reason we haven't turned on the power is that when it rains, the garage roof leaks and water runs down through the electrical outlets on the garage ceiling.



Perhaps we've been overly cautious. I think we're about to find out just how bad the existing electrical really is. What's the worst thing that can happen? The house burns down? We're already planning to burn it do, so how bad is that really?



Of course, we started off thinking rationally about the electrical. "The power in the house looks scary, so we'll get a temporary power pole installed," we said to ourselves. That's a separate power source that we would use during construction. It would allow us to disconnect all electricity to the house and have power to the trailer. It seemed like a great idea all around.

Yesterday these two gentlemen came to install the temporary power. They dug a very deep hole, planted the pole, stabilized it, and ran a special cord to the trailer so we'd have 30 amp power. Then Elmer, the fellow on the left, called the county to follow up on our temporary power permit application.

At this point he found out that the county will not approve a temporary power pole unless you already have an approved building permit. What's involved in getting a building permit? You need detailed architectural drawings (we're six weeks away from this), and an approved flood plain development permit (which takes six weeks to get, and you can't apply for this until you've got detailed drawings), then you need to go through the building permit approval process (another two weeks).

So while we have a lovely pole in our yard, we are still three or four months away from actually being able to have power at the pole. Which means we need to find a different way to get power to the trailer.

Which takes me back to the beginning of this post. What's the worst that could happen if we turn on the power to the house and plug in the trailer? And if we go that route, are we being brave or just desperate. Wait, don't answer that.

If things start on fire, I'll post pictures.

In the meantime, I wonder if we can get some kind of "do not resuscitate" order in place for our house so the fire department doesn't respond if it catches on fire...