Today was not a trip down memory lane, although some good Rat Pack music would have been a nice accompaniment while working.  Tim called around 8:30 AM to verify the delivery details for our 16-foot Pack-Rat storage container and confirm that we would be home around 10 AM.

We wanted to get the container as close as possible to the garage while still being able to open the doors.  In that location it would also be out of the way of the pull-through driveway in case we wanted/needed to get the bus out.  The potential problem with this location was that the container had to be unloaded underneath and then behind the main phone line that hangs across our driveway.  The vertical clearance from the driveway to the phone line is just under 12′ 6″.  I was told when I ordered the container that they needed 13′ 6″, minimum.

We had not seen any landscapers by 9:00 AM so I called Steve at VLD and left a message.  The previous owners of the house left a large (bulky) projection TV which we had the movers bring up from the basement and put in garage when we moved in last year.  Linda called Alchin’s,  our trash collection company, to see if they would pick it up.  They said they would so we rolled it out to the curb with the rest of the trash.  I called Steve (VLD) on his cell phone and found out he was in our backyard.  Apparently he arrived just as we finished putting out the trash and went back in the house.  The landscape crew was supposed to have been there at 9:00 AM.  He called them and then left.  A Two-man crew showed up a little while later.

I placed our 8′ fiberglass (non-metallic, non-conducting) stepladder under the phone line and used an 8′ 2×4 and some short pieces (as blocking) to temporarily raise the line to 13′ 7″.  Tim showed up right on time and, after taking care of the paperwork, surveyed the situation.  He said it would not be a problem placing the container where we wanted it and it turned out that lifting the phone line was not necessary.  Here’s why…

The truck that delivers these containers is very specialized.  It has a built in crane with two long arms, kind of like a forklift, that extend down the sides of the truck and then make a 90 degree bend and connect to the main telescoping mast.  The mast is normally just behind the cab when the container is loaded and ready for transport.  To unload the container the arms are swung out away from the sides of the truck a couple of feet and then raised.  Four lifting bars are inserted into the base of the container, two on each side, and attached to the arms with chains.  The arms are then raised, lifting the container free from the truck bed (after it is un-strapped).  The entire crane assembly then slides backwards until the container is clear of the rear bumper, allowing it to be lowered.  Before final placement, however, the truck can still be moved back and forth.  (This is only true if the container is empty.  If it is loaded, the rear stabilizing jacks on the truck have to be lowered, preventing the truck from moving.)

I helped Tim position the truck so the crane mast was just in front of the phone line and the front of the container was just behind it.  We are only using the container for on-site storage so it will be empty when we finally have them come back and pick it up.  Positioned where it is they can retrieve it without raising the phone line so we won’t necessarily have be here at the time.  We will be, but it will still be less work for us.

With the container in place we started moving things out of the garage.  Some went into the container, some went into Linda’s car to go to the recycling center, some got set aside for donation or sale on Craig’s List, and some got designated to go in next week’s trash pickup.  I really hate throwing anything away that might be useful, but our limited experience with things like Freecycle have not been good, and selling things on eBay or Craigslist has never seemed worth the effort the small monetary return.

Around noon the landscapers wanted to know if we knew of an urgent care facility nearby.  That’s not a question you want to be asked on a construction site.  One of the guys was bitten by a spider and thought it might have been a Brown Recluse.  When they first started working on the retaining walls in the back they identified what they thought was a Brown Recluse (fiddleback) spider.  Although Michigan is farther north than their normal range they do occur here, so it was possible that’s what bit him.  The nearest medical facility we knew about was a hospital about five miles away, but Steve wanted them to go to an urgent care facility because he through they would get quicker service.  (They had called Steve before even asking us for assistance.)  Linda got on her computer and located one in the same area as the hospital.  They left to seek treatment and did return.

We did a little online research and found that there are a lot of spiders that resemble the Brown Recluse, which can range from gray to almost black and from the size of a penny to slightly larger than a quarter.  The name “fiddleback” comes from a pattern on the dorsal (upper) side of the spider, but is not a definitive identifier.  The most definitive characteristic is the six eyes; most spiders have eight.  Unfortunately they crew did not have the spider, so a positive ID was not possible.

After lunch Linda went to the recycling center and did some grocery shopping while I continued to work in the garage.  We had cleared out the east wall and the northeast corner which allowed me to remove wire shelving that was installed there.  I also had clear access to the electrical sub-panel so I removed the cover to have a look inside.  There were 11 load wires connected, nine to single-pole 120 VAC breakers and two to a double-poll 240 VAC breaker.  The power feed from the main panel in the basement was three-wire (2 hot, 1 neutral) not four like it should be, and all of the branch circuit ground wires were bonded to the neutral conductors.  This may have been OK at one time but is absolutely not current national electrical code (NEC).  Grounds and neutrals in an electrical system should only be bonded (connected together) at one point, usually in the main panel or at the service entrance.  For remote sub-panels, such as in a separate building, the ground wires can be connected to a pair of ground rods at least 8 feet long driven into the earth, but this is not an ideal arrangement.  If the resistance is not low enough it will limit the current flow through the ground wire to something less than required to trip the circuit breaker.

After dinner I got a phone call from Gaye, the chair of the FMCA Education Committee.  We talked for quite a while about the committee and RVing in general.  The whole committee has never met for a face-to-face meeting and many of us do not really know each other, so this was a chance to get better acquainted.