As foretold, the power was out for half the day Saturday while the team replaced the old panel with a new one. Sadly, I don’t have any good pictures from before. The power was already a bit complicated by the solar cutoff switch and meter. Now, the panel’s been replaced, and there’s a big box with our meter and a spot for the ADU’s meter.

More progress today. Now the rumor is the power will be out tomorrow or the next day.

So while one part of the crew has been putting up the drywall, another part has been preparing the electrical panel. The original house is getting a new panel; it’s still not exactly clear to me how they’re all going to interconnect along with the solar. There are other parts I don’t really understand, like running a new ground all the way to the front of the house to connect to the plumbing when there’s plenty of ground right under the main panel. I expect there’s a good reason; perhaps to guarantee all the pipes are actually grounded to one another?

Since the front yard got all torn up, we’re re-arranging it. That involves moving plants, stone, and irrigation around. So I spent part of the weekend digging up sprinklers and redoing them. Two of the three revisions are pictured in the gallery, along with a construction inspector who showed up unexpectedly.

There hasn’t been much visible work while waiting on inspections, and then the crew worked for a couple of nights until after dark. Even during this morning’s rain, they were working. Fortunately, they’d put the roofing on yesterday. We also had the alarm guy come and do the prep for the alarm system (no photos of that stuff, for obvious reasons).

In any case, I finally got in again today. They’ve been readying for the stuccoing, and they’ve got much of the insulation in. It’s weirdly silent inside compared to how it was before!

There’s been some friction over communication. The sprinkler pipes in both front and back yard were still broken, even after we’d been assured they were all in order. There has been some repair work, but I’m not sure that this has been resolved yet. On another front, we went through paint color decisions for the unit, but then were later told that only stucco staining options were available.