Garden Shipping Container on the Slab, Cameras Added & Electricity Re-Dos for County Coding
So many things have happened in the last 2 weeks. I was up and out early to get to the property and get to work. First I’ll catch you up in chronological order since I haven’t posted in 2 weeks!
I’ll start with the electrical work. The county gave me a list of discrepancies between our plan and county codes including things like spacing between receptacles, smoke detector needing to be outside of bedroom, an out let on the back of the container, etc. So, Roger from Kennedy Electric came to the property and inspected everything and Friday before last his guys showed up and did all the required work. This included having to rewire things and cut through the dry wall in order to do that. But, they got it all done, put the drywall back in place the best they could and even relabeled everything in my electrical box! BAM!!! We will need to go a little repairing but not much.
They took photos of all the work and are now writing a certification letter for us to give to the architect who is working on a certification letter to the county about all the work that the county is insisting on being verified … including the electrical, plumbing and insulation behind the dry wall and the roof.
The next great thing that happened is that Jason from Guardian Fencing came to the property and moved my new empty shipping container, that I am going to use for storage in the garden area, onto it’s slab! OMG … it is perfect sitting there all leveled and aligned. Last week I sprayed a ton of lubricant on the doors and stored a few containers in there and locked it up with my new lock.
This Sunday Nair, my GC and friend, met me on the property and she used her blower to blow it out and brought me her pressure washer and power sprayer to paint it with. It was so great of her to do that – she had to drive 1.5 hours on Sunday morning to get there!!! I finished uploading the tons of tools and supplies I had been storing in my Jeep Gladiator, for about a year, into the container. I couldn’t believe how much I had stuffed into the Jeep. My Jeep has a back seat and an empty bed again LOL. It it all sitting in pretty new airtight containers in the shipping container now.
Next week I will vacuum it out with my shop vac and then pressure clean the floor. We will be storing all the materials for the rest of the work that needs to be done on the property in there so the contractors can get to it and it will remain dry. I will also begin to work on the outside as I need to grind and sand all the rust off the outside and put a rust preventative on it. I will also be using a hot gun to remove all the old stickers on the outside and then I will put a seal coat on the roof and a primer and paint on the rest of the container.
Once the construction is done I will come back and clean the floor again and put a floor sealant on it. Then it will be ready for me to use for ongoing storage storage of personal things, power tools, regular tools, garden stuff, a brush hog mower and more. I will also be putting up shelving and a work bench that we can use for all our next creations, particularly for the garden.
Since I am now beginning to store thing in the shipping container I decided it was time to put my other security cameras up on the property. I have a lock on the container but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have extra protection. So Sunday I started with switching out the smaller Reolink Go PT Plus with a bigger Reolink Go PT Ultra. The camera is better and it has a crazy amount of cool features that I want there by the house. I backed the Jeep up to the tree it was on and stood on the truck bed and got it done.
Then I moved to the garden area where I installed another Reolink Go PT Ultra on a tree near the shipping container. Jeep up and used the bed to stand on vs trying it with a ladder. Again I just backed the The camera can view the entire garden area, the container door and the path/road coming into the garden area.
Finally I took the smaller camera that I originally had in the home area, the Reolink Go PT Plus and I installed it a little way inside the large double gates on the path/road into the rest of the property. The pine tree I was installing it on had some broken branches on it so when I got the camera installed I was using my extension cutters to remove those branches. One pull too hard and down I went on the gravel on my butt. I am sure I will have bruise …hurt like hell and I don’t have much padding back there LOL.
The good news is that I now have cameras in all the critical places and they all can be viewed, recorded and managed from my phone 100 miles away where I live. The cameras are really pretty amazing. They all even have speakers so that I can literally shout at anyone on the property. LOL. I need one more camera at the fork from the small walk-in gate on the south side of the property on the asphalt road and the windy path from the single wide gate on the southwest corner on the limestone road. I’ll get that one done when I am living on the property so that I have full property surveillance at that point. Right now I just want to protect my two “buildings”.
I posted videos of everything related to both Sunday’s including the electrical work that was done, the garden contain on the slab, the inside of the garden container with my tools in it, and the three camera placements on the Freedom Acres YouTube Channel, and as always my exciting end of the day report on both Sundays & various videos with Gracie. Feel free check it all out by clicking HERE. Also, feel free to subscribe and you can get notified when new videos go up! 🙂
We are now moving into the 2nd week of September and I have changed the game to be living on the property THIS Yearl!! LOL. I am still dealing dealing with what I am needing to do to get past the county’s latest demands of 4 – 6 weeks ago. Tankabox, the manufacturer of the home shipping container shell is busy collecting specs on EVERYTHING behind the dry wall and roof including the electricity, plumbing and insulation. I need certifications on everything it seems now AND photos for the architect, that I said earlier will then send her letter to the county. Bottom line is that a lot of detailed paperwork needs to be done and none of that moves fast. So I have no idea how long it will all take to get it resolved. I know we will get it resolved one way or the other though! Everything in terms of inspections is halted until I get that done.
I met Jason’s Dad last week on the property to make sure he got the info he needs to do the siding, skirting, tie-downs and a platform for the electric box. He will get me a materials list for all of that & Jason already got me the material list for the deck. Nair will order and deliver all of those materials to the property so that when they can ge there to do the work they have everything they need.
My job continues to be to keep things moving and to avoid self-imploding. I keep reaching out to everyone, moving the ball and inch at a time. So does Nair, my friend/GC. I don’t know if I will ever get my final PHD in patience or if I will just keep learning forever. I do think I am getting better at learning the lessons but that might be debatable from others around me. LOL.
I keep tending to the plants where I am staying in St Pete and occupying the time I am not working to pay for all of this by learning things I need to know about starting the gardens on the property. That includes a wide array of plant knowledge plus how to build garden beds, a green house and soil repair.
All I know for sure is that it things are still happening!. I stay in gratitude as my go-to experience. I work constantly on my PHD in patience LOL I know that I continue to find things to be proud of myself about … however big or small. I spend time drawing out the gardens and envisioning myself 3 years from now at 70 with flourishing gardens, a community built and a life filled with the results of all this work today. So, STAY TUNED coz no telling what will show up this week!
As always, I send you FREEDOM and LOVE!
