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We had been thinking about what to talk about this week in our blog, and then it hit me when I was outside pulling electrical wire through conduit.  Electrical. 

You may have noticed there was not blog last week. That was because Greg was off elk hunting with two friends. They were successful and came home with a 5×6 bull elk. This created a problem…

Walk-in cooler
Walk-in cooler

Several months ago, he realized the walk-in cooler wasn’t working. We only turn it on when it is needed, but the condenser was not turning on when we needed it to. We added it to the always growing to-do list and would fix it when needed. When the elk came home, it was needed!

Over the past year, Greg’s knowledge of electrical has been expanding. There have been dozens of electrical projects, some small and some big. The biggest was installing the whole house solar panel system. Others have included re-wiring the garage subpanel, installing a new subpanel in the barn, wiring 3-way switches, installing smart switches, installing RV electrical hook-ups, trouble-shooting power issues, adding outlets throughout the house, changing out and adding breakers in electrical panels, adding exterior lamp posts, installing the walk-in cooler with a 240 v condenser and a 120 v evaporator, building the garage lean-to with lighting, running dedicated power to the lean-to hot water heater, etc. All of these issues have their own voltage and amperage requirements that leads to wire type, wire size, conduit size and different methods of connections. The hot leg(s), neutral and proper grounding is critical. Having a farm is no small task, so having more electrical knowledge has become a necessity.  

So yes, at 9pm Monday night we were outside pulling new 3-gauge wire from the house to the garage through an underground conduit so that it could get hooked up to the subpanel. Earlier, Greg had to make up an electrical cord so our generator could power the 100-amp, 240-volt electrical panel so that the walk-in cooler would work and keep the elk cold. We really didn’t want to feed the generator fuel through the night and listen to it running, so I was out feeding a large bundle of wire into a conduit at the house while Greg pulled from the other end at the garage.

New electrical panel & solar invertors in barn
New electrical panel & solar invertors in barn

No rest for the weary…..