Monday - early
Cold outside, 33 degrees with real-feel of 30. It's going to get up to 59 degrees later on. I have a light in the shed that puts off a lot of heat. Even at 30 degrees, give it 20 minutes and it will warm up in there. I want to get as much of the wiring done today as I can possibly get done. I will be charging up the 1/2 pipe as well to see if that is also -hopefully - leak free and can move on from the water stuff, at least for the washer and dryer.
Yes, the dryer has a hose going into it for some sort of steam option to get wrinkles out of clothing. I have never heard of this before and will be interested to see if it actually works. IE: do a load of wash once I get it going. With the water hopefully done, it shouldn't be much longer. The drain is complete excepting running the line to the roof so it's really just a matter of getting the electrical finished or at least, mostly finished. But I think I want all the electrical lines run for everything before I go hooking up the main line to the lines in the pedestal.
Realistically, I could already do that, it's just 2 hot lines and a neutral. Oh, speaking of that, I just remembered I also have to put a ground rod in. I have the rod already, I didn't get the ground wire and the clip to attach to the rod yet. So, there is another trip to Lowe's before I can think about turning on power. But I'm not going to Lowe's first thing, at least, not if I can find an extension cord here long enough to work instead of having to buy yet another cord. Oops, I need 2 grounding rods. This is why I watch endless YouTube videos of this stuff....
Anyway, I don't think I want to energize the main line until the whole thing is ready to go, that way there are no accidents/electrocutions and death, lol. The wire just plugs into a 125 amp breaker that feeds the board with power that feeds the individual circuit breakers. I'm glad I bought a bigger breaker box, I'm going to need several circuits for everything. The dryer, water heater and oven will get their own, dual pole breaker. The HipCamp will likely have 2 single pole breakers devoted to that. The window AC - I haven't decided yet, but probably inline with the light switch and light. I run a window AC in my room and that circuit also provides power to everything else in the room.
I can put the washer on that circuit too. I currently have the window ac fan, 2 space heaters and the coffee maker going on one circuit in here along with lights, computer, charging, etc. It's a 15 amp line. I'm installing 20 amps for that circuit. I'm ready to try and get this stuff over with, it's taking too long. People are wanting the washer and dryer and I am definitely trying to get it up and going. It's far more work than one would anticipate.
I am buying a cord of firewood for $175 - very cheap price and 18 inch long pieces. This is far better than the first cord I bought. There wasn't a cord there to begin with and much of the pieces weren't even a foot long. Just a rip off, really. They tried to claim it was a cord, I know better. This person is also going to string it up into bundles. I offered to pay more. I don't know how much more he wants, I'm assuming at least $100. Maybe more.
I was quoted $10 a bundle from a large firewood company in Dallas. That's my cost to buy bulk quantity. I had to laugh at that. I don't want to even try and charge my guests $10 per bundle, I consider that an outrageous price. Lowe's has bundles like that at $10.99 and I laughed the first time I saw it. Their pile isn't dwindling quickly - at all. Not only was this company going to charge me that much, I would have had to drive clear to Dallas to pick it up. No thank you.
I've got another week stay that came in Saturday. As of Monday next week, that will be the end of any short term stays this month and only 5 days worth booked for next month. That is not good. I am motivated to get this project completed and get started on the bathroom already. There should be minimal costs to build the bathroom now that I already have the toilet and the shower stall. Lumber to build the walls and form the shower stall. Floor drain and p trap for the shower, floor drain for the toilet. It's going to be fun trying to hook all of that up. Not just hooking it up, but leak free hooking it up.
Still, I have most of the supplies, at least the costly stuff. Lumber isn't cheap but I won't need that much of it. Maybe 10 studs at something like $4.99 per 8 foot stick. I think. I haven't measured it yet, I'm just doing head calculation of how many studs I'll need for vertical and the horizontal studs. Oh, forgot the door. I will probably buy a pre-framed door, I'm just not good enough to try to frame my own door setup. That will add on to the cost but it will eliminate a lot of headaches.
Anyway, I am going to have the firewood by the shed now. That way I can set up a camera on it and see who's taking it and see if they are going to be honest about it. Yes, the honor system for now. I don't know of any other way to do it besides simply selling it only when I'm there. These people show up at night and have fires long after I've gone home.
If it doesn't work out, I will either not sell firewood at all or it will only be available for the hours that I am present at the property. I don't know how honest any of these people that are using firewood are, I don't really trust strangers too much.
If you think I'm going back to work before I get most or all of this done, think again. I have enough money coming in now to tide me over for a while longer. In fact, if I get rid of some more stuff I don't really have to have, I may be able to live off of the income until I get it completed and then - maybe - I will go back to trucking. Maybe. I don't want to be broke all the time, ie: just paying bills and nothing else.
I have been reading that these bank collapses are going to make it much more difficult to get business funding for upstarts or expansions. That is really disappointing. I don't know how I am going to expand the park without a loan. Another septic system is almost 7 grand in and of itself. Of course, if I could get a septic system installed and have them install the piping, the rest I could do mostly myself and save a lot of money. I don't want to install the piping because it has to be at a minimum pitch and tho I did okay with the sewer line I installed for the shed, I really don't want to try and do that for lots.
Putting wiring in the ground is easy, installing pedestals apparently isn't that hard and I can definitely run my own water line. That would leave dirt work and gravel. So let's say 6 more lots, I think that's what I can get on that size septic system. $500 for wiring, around $400 a piece for pedestals, $700 per truckload for gravel, $7,000 plus piping for the septic, around a grand for water line and fittings.
Looking at over 15 grand plus a couple grand for unknowns/higher prices/ more materials than expected. If paying someone to do the dirt work, add a couple thousand. So more like 20 grand. It would be weird if I couldn't get a collateral loan for that much. You know, put the entire property up for repayment? I could easily fill up 6 more spaces with long term, which is around 3 grand more per month income. I could definitely live off of that plus the income already being realized with the 14 spaces.
That's basically what I'm going to try and do tho, see if I can get a collateral loan.
When I get this shed closer to done, I'm going to be calling the contractor's business partner - he recommended him and gave me his phone number - and see if I can get anything going. I won't know unless I try, market be damned and failed banks be damned as well. There are still going to be loans made, it will be at higher interest rates. It's whatever, as long as it doesn't consume the entire amount of projected income. The business partner is a banker and can give me an idea of how much the park is worth including the 25 acres it's sitting on. I guess they would also have to finance the property to make a collateral loan. I'm wondering if I shouldn't divide the property into 2? The main driveway is a permanent easement tho I would have that written into the thing and I could have the RV park as a separate entity from the rest of the property, some 17-1/2 acres.
If I could get a loan, that would mean the 17-1/2 acres would be paid off in full and the only amount owing would be on the RV park itself. I don't owe a huge amount on the property, somewhere around $64k right now. But its a 20 year loan, that's how I got the payments so low.
Well, I'm not getting anything done sitting here, musing about things.
G'day
