Paradise ponders: quarter-rounds, expert electricians, LED lighting, and ubiquitous WiFi edition...

Paradise ponders: quarter-rounds, expert electricians, LED lighting, and ubiquitous WiFi edition...  Today the electricians from Golden Spike Electric showed up, as promised.  They went right to work installing an electrical subpanel in my cedar shed and running a circuit to the pumps in our little filling station.  I helped a little bit by installing some solid wood inside the cedar shed for them to mount components on.  As always, I was really impressed with the quality of their work.  They are a great example of the sort of craftsmen one can find up here in Utah, and that we never seemed to be able to find in California.  They couldn't quite finish the work today, though, as the explosion-proof “whips” they needed for the final connection to the pumps weren't available from the local electrical supply shop.  They've ordered the whips in from a supplier in Salt Lake City, and they should be here sometime in the next few days.  Meanwhile, though, I can now proceed with wiring up the shed to get ready for the irrigation components.

The first electrical item I'm putting up in the shed is some lighting.  We went down to Home Depot this afternoon to see what was available, and I found some 4' long strips, 3200 lumens at 4000k (bright white).  They look just about perfect for my application, so I got four of them to mount up on the ceiling of the shed.  That should fix me up with lighting!  Then I'll install a few outlets, with one dedicated for the irrigation “clock”.  Progress!  I also bought six more 100W equivalent bulbs for inside our house, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the price for these has dropped to under $14.  When I first started buying them, three years ago, they were almost $30.  I'm guessing it's less than five years until they're down to price parity with a high-quality halogen bulb of the same light output...

In between helping out the electricians, I put quarter-round trim all the way around the floor of the shed.  That gave the new flooring a nice, finished look.  The 45° cuts for the corners sure were a breeze with my “chop saw”.  All the times I've done similar trim work, I did it with a hand saw miter box.  The chop saw does a beautiful job by comparison, far better than I could ever do by hand.  Plus, it's easy!

I'm very sore all over today from moving the hay yesterday.  I thought I'd sleep like a log last night, but my aches and pains kept me awake half the night.  Oh, well...

Finally, this afternoon I put up the last Ubiquiti access point, in my shop.  The screen shot at right shows the lovely “green board” in the Dilatush WiFi Empire – all eight access points are up and running just fine, and we have rock-solid WiFi signals everywhere I've checked, inside every room in our house and barn, plus in our back yard.  Our Internet connectivity (both wired and wireless) here is now better than any business I was ever a part of.  Kind of mind-boggling, that is...