I guess it's been a while since I've put anything up here about the hot tub. Probably because I've been busy doing stuff for it. I had thought when I bought it that I'd just move it to some patch of grass, run a wire to it and fire it up. Turns out you have to do other stuff.
After the tub was moved I ordered some gravel from Mt. Scott Fuel on Foster, which was delivered in a dump truck - that was pretty cool. I got 3 yards of clean gravel and my buddy Aimee helped me shovel it into a wheelbarrow and then dump it into the hole. We put pressure treated 2x8s into the ground to support the pavers for the tub as well.
We ran over to Mt. Scott Fuel to get our first load of sand in Ron's truck and dumped that on top of the gravel. We got another 1/2 yard of sand into the truck and came back. While we were there we saw some guy in a Chevy S-10 get a whole yard of sand dumped into his rig. That was pretty funny, his suspension dropped about a foot. I was nice(ish) to Ron's truck and only did a half yard at a time, which was still about a half ton.
It took about 3 hours to shovel, move, dump and level the 3 yards of gravel and yard of sand. I was pretty impressed with our work. Since it was early and I had a truck, we went back to Mt. Scott Fuel and picked up 1400 pounds worth of flagstone. It was supposed to be $0.28 a pound but we got it at $0.20, which was pretty nice.
Next was the wiring. I had a 1/2 inch metal conduit from the house to the garage and I figured I'd be able to shove the 220 volt wiring through there. After Ron helped me cut the conduit with his Sawsall we found out it wouldn't fit. So I took the 16 pound sledgehammer to the driveway for fun since we were stuck.
A week later I got a hold of a hammer drill and some bits from my buddy Mike. I drilled a new hole into the foundation of the garage and grew the existing hole in the house. From that my dad and I were able to shove a 3/4 inch PVC from the house to the garage.
The next week I put up a subpanel box in the garage, with the help of Aimee. It took a few hours but I got the 220 hooked up to the subpanel and started on re-wiring the lighting and scary room of the garage. The next day I finished the wiring of the lights. It was a bit tricky as it was a 3 wire set-up with a new ground. There were two hot wires, one for the scary room and one that was switched for the light. I connected the switch, and a 2 plug outlet in a 4" box by the sub-panel in the garage. It was a bit tight with all of the grounds and wires, but I screwed it all in.
That night I started to connect the 220 up to the main breaker box in my basement. I thought better of doing it alone and asked Ron to come over in case I got shocked or something. After turning off the main breaker I started pulling the 220 wiring into the box. That was a bit weird - I had to knock out the knockouts with a hammer and screwdriver which was about 1 inch from the fat hot wires coming from the street.
A half hour later it was all done. I closed up the panel and ran to the garage to see the lights turn on. They didn't. I had forgotten to close the circuit on the subpanel. Still nothing. Damnit. Then I remembered that I hadn't closed the 50 amp circuit breaker in the basement.
Now we had light.
This week I continued working on the wiring. I started to drill holes into the studs in the garage to get a wire ready for the tub. But I was tired and ate pizza after drilling the holes. Turns out you need to have the circuit breaker at *least* 5 feet from the tub. So I drilled a hole right by the subpanel.
Tuesday night I put up my new 50 amp GFCI circuit breaker on the outside of the hose and wired it up to the dead wire. Last night I attached the 220 wire from the subpanl to the GFCI and turned it all on. I tested the GFCI and it did what it was supposed to, so that's good.
I finished up last night by filling in the hole by the conduit (covering the condiuit with a gutter so you can't cut through it.) And finished putting the pavers onto the 8x8 hot tub space.
Then I ate some pizza.
