Why is the power out right now
A Power Outage Proof Home! (Connecting to Natural Gas)
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holy cow
this is incredible oh my gosh
well did the power go out oh the power
went out
oh my gosh guys i'm afraid to open this
door
our house is literally being tested
right now
holy cow
oh my god they're so it's
modern homes and properties are far from
power outage proof
no power no water no heat
no lights within minutes or hours your
gorgeous mansion just became an
overpriced shed
where your basic needs can't be met when
we designed our dream home
we planned to be completely off grid so
that we were never dependent on these
systems for our basic needs
we since realized that we can have our
cake and eat it too
we can take advantage of the many
conveniences of modern utilities
while designing our house in a way that
can also operate without these things
a win win today we begin the
installation of natural gas to our house
we have quite the system in the works
which we'll elaborate on later
but first we have to go pick up some
sand
we bought a dump truck earlier this year
which allows us to get our own materials
and save on transportation costs we'll
need five loads of sand for this project
or about 30 yards
roger that we'll come over there
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so if the trench is about here
i hate to do it but it's like put the
sand kind of like
right here and then it's kind of within
reach of the
the mini yeah we can still get the truck
out of here
well i guess we'll have to just kind of
drive everything out this side so i
think we'll put it right here as silly
as that is
and that'll get us from there to there
why are you so difficult you're sad
how hard can it be
we got our first load of sand my
sister's off and running she's going to
be picking up five more of those
to get us ready for bedding the natural
gas in sand
the plan is to bring the meter to this
corner of the house
and keep it out of the water line of
water from the eve
to put it right next to the apron right
here
so we've got to start the trench here
and then we're working our way down here
past the cabin
and then down the driveway you can kind
of see the trench from our
bringing grid power into the house here
we need to stay away from that
comfortable distance
and the time consuming part of this
whole trench is really going to be
right in here and then we've got an
electrical connection we want to make
down there that's going to be time
consuming too
but we've got our footing drain coming
out right here and we also have the
power to
our well coming out right here so right
in here we're gonna have to slow down
and probably do some hand work so we can
stay
safe and keep all that protected
we had locates done at the road where
natural gas will be coming from
and we know where all the utilities are
on our property so we plan to stay a
comfortable distance from those
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the reason we needed so many loads of
sand was to bed the gas line and any
other utilities going into the trench
backfilling with rocky soil is no bueno
as it can puncture things
nobody wants a utility line running up
the middle of their driveway
so we decided to put it to the side the
day prior we cut into the hillside a bit
to make room for this
and then we'll do some landscaping to
make things pretty
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that's not a bad looking trench for rock
i've seen worse
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wow turns out digging in clay is way
easier than digging in rock
50 feet to go
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my goodness holy cow that's got a
let me know if you feel it oh i felt
it oh that's the biggest rock so far
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do
did good today excavator you did
really good today
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looks like they are here it sounds like
we got the green light they're gonna do
the connection down the street
we did not get finished last night so
we're gonna have to knock out that last
10 to 12 feet
i'm glad we waited because they had some
pretty specific instructions
for the way their barricade goes in if
we'd have dug it the way we wanted to
guess what it wouldn't have worked
so thankfully we didn't do that and we
can get moving on that straight away
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well i think we've got that as far as we
can go see where these guys are at
looks like they got the pipe in it's
already bedded generously in sand
uh so while they're working on that
we've got two conduits that we're going
to throw
in this trench we tried to get a hold of
the phone company we don't even have
high speed internet here
so we can't get it even if we wanted to
but what if someday
we get caught up with the rest of the
world and that happens well
they don't seem to answer their phone
it's a bit of an irony right uh so we're
gonna throw a conduit in there in case
they want to pull
whatever they got to do to get us hooked
up to the internet someday in the future
uh and then the other thing is we're
gonna connect a couple outlets down here
and bring power to a couple of spots so
while they're working on that we can get
everything glued up and then we've got a
couple of posts
that we're gonna set so we got plenty to
keep us busy until
they need us going in yeah
coming off
[Applause]
i'll ream a new glue okay
that's good enough too
okay
if a project is undone on our property
there's usually a reason
usually it's that everything's extremely
layered as is also the case with the
natural gas project
trenching is such a big deal that we'd
really rather be done with it
so while on one hand it seems quicker to
worry about one thing at a time
it ultimately results in double or
triple work needless to say this is a
really good excuse
to finally not have extension cords
running all over the property
yeah if we put that post like right here
we can 45 up to that
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what's funny is once the planning is
done the work is usually pretty easy
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if we 90 about here we can kind of bend
the rest
having power at the sawmill is gonna be
rad
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okay i think that's done looks good
okay they said we're good to backfill so
we get this connected and dropped in or
off to the races all bed if you want to
spring me sand um i guess
you can do it the dump truck or the mini
but i mean the back or the mini
backhoe might be easier just not tear
the ground up
oh you dirty dog
[Applause]
sweet they got the stub up on there
looks like with the valve
and they've got this barricade and we
got our conduit
boy that's getting busy over here but it
looks good it's exciting
and i think the meter is going to go
right there
so how does natural gas tie into our
power outage proof plan
our primary heat source will be a wood
boiler power's out
no problem we'll still have a warm house
via our radiant floor heating
as well as domestic hot water but if we
get lazy
want to leave the property in winter for
a period of time or we don't want to
burn because it's summer
we'll have the set it and forget it
option with both natural gas
and electricity as backups
so everything's bedded i think the
bedding that conduit and sand is
probably overkill
most of it's schedule 80. i don't think
it's gonna get hurt but
in this bony rocky soil a little safety
doesn't hurt and
sands five dollars and fifty cents a
yard
that's about twenty five dollars in sand
to avoid having to do like 400
an excavation 300 in excavation so it
was worth it
i think what we're going to do because
we can is set up two machines to
backfill
and we're going to see if we can knock
this thing out in
right quick and in a hurry
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for us when deciding whether to have an
off-grid or utility tied house
we like to have options and also feel it
increases the value of our home
it's a bit of extra work in the planning
to have redundancy built in
but you're never sad when there's a
utility outage and you have options
or when you're tired of the work that
comes with being off grid and want the
ability to live a little more modern
instead of living in fear that the power
is gonna go out or that we won't have
the energy or ability to keep up with
the wood boiler as life goes on and we
age
we know that our bases are covered and
that we have a home
that should adapt with us and be
comfortable over our lifetime
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[Applause]
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well it's finally in it took a few days
with the holiday and all that fun to get
everything buttoned up
but we've got our meter gas lines in
everything is ready to go
we still have a lot of work to do before
we can get the gas turned on
that's going to be a totally separate
video this was a huge project that we
expected to have done
months ago and it feels really good
because now the pressure is on
us to get this up and running i was
super worried
given how crazy this year has been that
if we didn't get the meter in
we may never get the meter in so i'm
glad this is all done
everything's backfilled and buttoned up
we still have a project to do on the
driveway
but that's a whole different project and
we're not going to tackle that animal
right now so this feels good i look
forward to getting it connected
and the day that this lock comes off and
the natural gas is flowing
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you
