Work on the barn continues.  I haven’t had much to say here lately, I’ve been too busy working on the actual project.  🙂

I’ve got the beams all up, which was quite a bit of work for one person.  I’m ready to start work on framing the second floor!

Barn beams and columns

I had the PG&E service planning guy come out and look at my site last week.  He is trying to sell me on a smaller, 200 amp service.  I think his motivation is that he doubts I’ll ever use the full capacity of a larger service, and doesn’t want to bother installing excess capacity.  I’m not so convinced about that, but he does have a point that installing a second 200 amp service in the future if I need more amps will be cheaper than the single, large service.  And we’re not talking nickels and dimes here, the installed cost of a 200 amp service with a customer-owned pole will be something on the order of $3,000.  I’m looking at more like $9,000 for the class-320 service because PG&E has to install and own the pole, and also the service equipment will cost four times what the smaller equipment cost.

I’m inclined to go with the 200 amp service if I can confirm with the county that our parcel is properly zoned for a “second dwelling unit” on its own electric meter.