Rufus The Doofus

We did get another long-overdue project started while dad was in town. (That’s him throwing a tantrum above.)

The power in our area goes at least once every two weeks. Sometimes for more than 24 hours. When we used to have the web servers and all that stuff here at home we had to install an auto-transfer power generator to deal with these kinds of problems. We have a 15 kW Generac propane powered generator on the old house that’s been sitting there for a couple of years. This week we got started on the process of moving it to the new house.

It only took us a couple of hours to remove the generator from the old house. It was pretty straightforward. The tractor made it easy to move it from one building to the other. Once we had it moved we could start planning its placement on the new house.

These generators come pre-wired to hook up to an auto-transfer switch. (A transfer switch isolates generator power from the puplic utility supply.) The supplied wiring limits the placement of the unit so we had to figure that out first. Once that was done we needed to plan a shed roof structure to keep the snow off of the generator in the winter. Generators don’t work too well when they’re under 5 feet of snow.

We chose a location and started digging the holes for the concrete piers that would support the wall. The digging didn’t go well in our rocky soil. We were able to make it work but the piers aren’t evenly spaced or squared off to each other. Oh well, I wasn’t willing to try to dig up the huge rocks in our way.

After the holes were dug and the two end piers were placed we built the generator stand.

The stand places the generator up two feet off the ground. This will help keep it out of the snow. We chose to use the steel grate so drifting snow won’t build up on the stand. The area of roof above the generator directs a lot of snow to this side of the house. I wanted to be sure I won’t spend a bunch of time digging it out all winter.

After the stand was in place and the generator sitting on it we could place the middle concrete post and get started on the structure.
This went pretty well other than one minor measurement problem. The roof rafters went very quickly once we had the first one measured and cut to use as a pattern.

So that’s how it’s sitting right now. I hope to get the siding and roofing in place tomorrow or the next day depending on weather. Then I’ll get to work on wiring it up sometime in the next couple of weeks.

It’s a huge relief to have the generator sitting over here now. Soon we won’t have to worry about power problems like these any more.

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