A babies on the way, WHAT NOW!!!!!

Funny how a pending baby (our first) changes your priorities. You see our baby is due in November this year, actually due on my birthday! The doctors can be pretty accurate as ours is an IVF one!  So it will be the start of summer. Now we don't have air conditioning, yes we are in the hills but we still get some days which are a bit hot! We wanted to get air conditioning but were told by a friend who is an electrician we couldn't until we upgraded out switch board, do it I said! Not that simple. Here comes the list of things that is needed before we get air conditioning!

Drive way before trees removed

Trees gone, Stumps gone, pit in
cable and conduit ready to be connected

We were told by the electricity company we couldn't up grade the switch board until we put the power underground. I organised with the power company to come out and install a ground pit where our underground power could connect to.  A friend who's an electrician will be doing the work. He organised the paper work with drawing of what is needed, nearest power pole location, etc, etc. Only to be contacted by the power company advising his drawing were wrong we had a power pole closer half way up my drive. Now I know the difference between a cypress tree and a power pole. (one much easier to chop down than the other)!!!  I can assure you we have NO power pole up our drive. But alas the power company was adamant it was there. They would have to send out their surveyor's to ensure I was telling the truth! So some months later it was confirmed no power pole existed on our drive way! and a pit was installed.
Now i knew where the pit was we needed a trench dug from it to the switchboard on the house.

Proof conduit & cable 600mm deep

The pile of removed stumps

The only place we could practically put this trench was up the side of our drive, where a line of cypress trees were growing, all the way up the drive. First things first, I slowly chopped down the Cypress trees, stacking the branches in a few huge piles. When all trees were chopped down I got a huge chipper up and chipped all the branches up to 7 inches, I  chain sawed up the large stuff and will burn in our fire heater.  Now I had a row of stumps which needed removing. These stumps were all within 30cm of our lovely bitumen driveway. I could see it being demolished when they were removed.  A good friend and his wife, new borne and young toddler son came up last Saturday with a five tone excavator and pulled out all the stumps, dug a trench 700mm deep helped me lay the conduit and power cable from the electricity pit up the side of my drive across the drive nest to the house below the switch board which will be replace. a few sections of the drive were damage but it's a testament to how good an operator said friend is with an excavator! A true legend. During the digging of the trench an old terracotta pipe which was no longer in use was dug up. How ever at the top of the drive I noticed water coming from the pipe. Now with out going into a huge side storey, recently we had all our plumbing to kitchen, laundry & bathroom dug up at the back of the house and replaced the old terracotta pipe, which tree roots had cracked, blocked and wrecked with new PVC pipe. This will be another post explaining the joys of our plumbing issues! back to the trench. I decided we would finish laying the conduit and cable, back fill the trench then early that week I would take a day off work and fix the plumbing issue!
So now I have the cable in the trench back filled and MUD everywhere. The clean up begins, read next blog to see whats next!