Construction Update

Here's an update for the last two days as I missed yesterday's update.

Yesterday I met with the electrician. We went over where I wanted the various switches, outdoor lanterns, electrical outlets, overhead lights, accent lights, ceiling fans, etc. We also tried to figure out how much juice this place is going to need. He was originally thinking a 200 amp panel would suffice. We looked at a bunch of machines I have - video games seem to pretty much all be listed at 3A per machine. The one pinball machine I looked at was rated at 8A (!), and my bill changers say 6A each. So allowing for say 100 machines - 20 pinballs and 80 video games - that would be WAY over 200 amps. He's going to do some sort of study to see how things are going to be wired. It also depends on where things are in the building. For instance, he said if the pinball machines are really 8A each, then you could only put two of them on a 20A breaker. So it's going to be interesting to say the least, and we may end up going over to a second panel just from the sheer number of switches we'll need. He will be meeting with someone from the electric company too to go over it all, as it's possible that they will have to upgrade the big transformer that feeds our house. Yes, I'm serious. He did say that they are probably going to be giving the garage its own electric meter.

Here's a picture of a panel, still in the box, sitting in what will be the equipment closet. No idea if this is the panel he's actually going to end up using or not.



In other news, today the carpenter guys came out and framed over where the garage door openings are. On the inside this will be just a solid wall. The outside we are going to put up some sort of decorative trim to make it look like they are garage doors. Something like a carriage door is what I'm thinking.



Lastly, today they also framed up where the air exchanger will go for the heating and AC unit. I REALLY wanted to keep all this equipment off the main floor, but it looks like we don't have a choice unfortunately. And the last thing I want to do is inhibit the efficiency of the AC system, as our current gameroom heats up to around 100 degrees after a couple hours of having the machines on. We are trying to NOT have that problem here.