Май 26, 2008
Got got got got no time...
5/27 0741, Pushkin time
So wow. More than a month between postings. My last dry spell of that length was back when I was still working out of Portland and only posting on my trips.
On the other hand, things are busier here than they ever were there. In addition to A and the boys -- and we have even one more of those now than we had back when I was business-tripping -- we recently stepped up to a promise we had made some time back and got ourselves a great dane puppy. She's from a very good kennel and was already 95% domesticated when we got her, but still being as how she's only four months old, it's a chunk of time to expend.
Plus, since our dry spell -- that is, due to incompetence and/or fear on the part of several of our US partners, our complete lack of parts with which to build anything -- ended a couple weeks ago, П and I have had our hands more than full ramping back up to normal speed on top of the already-expected getting our new option packages implemented at the exact same time as we will be massively expanding our plant facilities and re-doing our entire assembly process (with all the construction-related grief that comes with that). Plus, periodically, either he or I need to do something related to the rest of the organization which takes us out of action for a day. Fortunately, we were recently granted a secretary, who will certainly be a big help to us once we have finished walking her through all the stuff we invented over the past six months so she can take it over on her own.
Oh yeah, and by the end of summer, we're committed to upping production by 50%. So yeah, it's kind of busy.
And then, of course, the house is moving along. In the last month, a brigade of Tajiks moved in and have added a couple of posts we really needed to take some spring out of our floors, gotten the floor decking all in (though for right now just tacked-with-nails, since we still don't have the power to run the screw guns for the final install), and the floors and ceilings insulated. They've also put in all the internal walls as well as the foundation and much of the brickwork for under our deck. I also had them set in two meters deep of concrete access-ring around the well as well as digging out the trenches in which our well pipe and our sewer pipes will run to the house and putting those particular hunks of piping in the ground.
After getting quotes from a few electricians ranging on the order of 150000rubles for labor alone(!!!!) to wire up our house, I was granted a one-month usage of our plant electrician (while he is on vacation) to get things done. The word is халтура [khaltura -- 'side-work']. And I'm a big fan of it now. In addition to covering the twenty-rubles-a-day it costs him to take the bus to our place and back, I'll probably end up paying no more than 30000 all told for his labor. And since he's doing the work for someone he knows, there's a bit more motivation, too. The slight down side is that I have to keep him supplied with materials, which has meant in the last couple days buying up all of the stock of ВВГп 3x1.5 wire (that is, solid copper wire, three strands, each 1.5mm diameter, insulated separately and then all in an outer insulation - the п means the package is flat as opposed to round) in two hardware stores in town and a good chunk of what was available from a third. Plus as well a meter and boxes, and in the neighborhood of forty circuit breakers of various sizes (though mostly 6A; remember, we're on 220V). As of yesterday evening, we have pretty much the entire second and first-and-a-half floors wired up; today and likely tomorrow he's going to get the upper floor breaker box put together, and then maybe another week for the first floor and garage level.
As for water/sewer/heating (they do water-radiator heat here almost exclusively), the quotes for labor on that are more on the order of 500000rubles. So I'm looking to халтура for that, too. It's a bit tougher to find, it seems; though since that side is a fair sight simpler than electrical, I'm strongly looking toward the possibility of at least getting the behind-the-walls work done myself (Z will probably help, if it goes that way) this coming weekend. With И advising, it should be fairly straightforward. And once we've gotten the wall work done, the Tajiks can come behind us and insulate and sheetrock. Then water/sewer (or maybe we do that ourselves, too, on another weekend) and then subflooring.
We've ordered our windows -- 23 of them, priced in euros; ouch. They should be brought and installed sometime in the next week-and-a-half. I'm ordering our furnace out of Moscow this week; since we have drivers going down that way all the time, getting it up here will be no problem. The only major item that remains slightly unclear at this point is the installation of the sewer device itself. We're pretty solidly against the hole-in-the-ground technique (we do get our water from a well, you know), but it's a bit tough finding an outfit that knows how to install the mini sewage processing stations that you can get here. We'll find someone for sure (or have the Tajiks dig and put it in ourselves, I suppose), but it's still a bit up in the air. Everything else is more or less on some sort of track.
And finally, as for paperwork. We should finally have our building permit in our hands on Wednesday/Thursday. That was the last snag we hit in getting our semi-legal (that is, set up and approved by the head of the local energy department, but not, strictly speaking, done according to any sort of rules) power strung out -- we've needed that for several months now, and the Tajiks are happy to hear that it is not far off. The final delay in getting the building permits was the sign-off from the office of the fire chief. The building codes require a 15-meter minimum spacing between wooden structures. Anyone who's seen our place and can imagine a meter could see that we don't quite make that at all -- primarily because of the wooden construction in our neighbor's yard right up against the property line. But we do have a reasonable spacing (I'd say on the order of 5-6 meters, which is plenty, compared to the 5 feet you frequently see in Portland), and the fire chief proved to be someone with whom a deal could be made. So, last hurdle jumped on that, and we should have power inside of the next two weeks. That's a big one -- particularly considering we will have gotten it done in less than a full year, which is way under par.
Of course that means we'll be that much busier.
So wow. More than a month between postings. My last dry spell of that length was back when I was still working out of Portland and only posting on my trips.
On the other hand, things are busier here than they ever were there. In addition to A and the boys -- and we have even one more of those now than we had back when I was business-tripping -- we recently stepped up to a promise we had made some time back and got ourselves a great dane puppy. She's from a very good kennel and was already 95% domesticated when we got her, but still being as how she's only four months old, it's a chunk of time to expend.
Plus, since our dry spell -- that is, due to incompetence and/or fear on the part of several of our US partners, our complete lack of parts with which to build anything -- ended a couple weeks ago, П and I have had our hands more than full ramping back up to normal speed on top of the already-expected getting our new option packages implemented at the exact same time as we will be massively expanding our plant facilities and re-doing our entire assembly process (with all the construction-related grief that comes with that). Plus, periodically, either he or I need to do something related to the rest of the organization which takes us out of action for a day. Fortunately, we were recently granted a secretary, who will certainly be a big help to us once we have finished walking her through all the stuff we invented over the past six months so she can take it over on her own.
Oh yeah, and by the end of summer, we're committed to upping production by 50%. So yeah, it's kind of busy.
And then, of course, the house is moving along. In the last month, a brigade of Tajiks moved in and have added a couple of posts we really needed to take some spring out of our floors, gotten the floor decking all in (though for right now just tacked-with-nails, since we still don't have the power to run the screw guns for the final install), and the floors and ceilings insulated. They've also put in all the internal walls as well as the foundation and much of the brickwork for under our deck. I also had them set in two meters deep of concrete access-ring around the well as well as digging out the trenches in which our well pipe and our sewer pipes will run to the house and putting those particular hunks of piping in the ground.
After getting quotes from a few electricians ranging on the order of 150000rubles for labor alone(!!!!) to wire up our house, I was granted a one-month usage of our plant electrician (while he is on vacation) to get things done. The word is халтура [khaltura -- 'side-work']. And I'm a big fan of it now. In addition to covering the twenty-rubles-a-day it costs him to take the bus to our place and back, I'll probably end up paying no more than 30000 all told for his labor. And since he's doing the work for someone he knows, there's a bit more motivation, too. The slight down side is that I have to keep him supplied with materials, which has meant in the last couple days buying up all of the stock of ВВГп 3x1.5 wire (that is, solid copper wire, three strands, each 1.5mm diameter, insulated separately and then all in an outer insulation - the п means the package is flat as opposed to round) in two hardware stores in town and a good chunk of what was available from a third. Plus as well a meter and boxes, and in the neighborhood of forty circuit breakers of various sizes (though mostly 6A; remember, we're on 220V). As of yesterday evening, we have pretty much the entire second and first-and-a-half floors wired up; today and likely tomorrow he's going to get the upper floor breaker box put together, and then maybe another week for the first floor and garage level.
As for water/sewer/heating (they do water-radiator heat here almost exclusively), the quotes for labor on that are more on the order of 500000rubles. So I'm looking to халтура for that, too. It's a bit tougher to find, it seems; though since that side is a fair sight simpler than electrical, I'm strongly looking toward the possibility of at least getting the behind-the-walls work done myself (Z will probably help, if it goes that way) this coming weekend. With И advising, it should be fairly straightforward. And once we've gotten the wall work done, the Tajiks can come behind us and insulate and sheetrock. Then water/sewer (or maybe we do that ourselves, too, on another weekend) and then subflooring.
We've ordered our windows -- 23 of them, priced in euros; ouch. They should be brought and installed sometime in the next week-and-a-half. I'm ordering our furnace out of Moscow this week; since we have drivers going down that way all the time, getting it up here will be no problem. The only major item that remains slightly unclear at this point is the installation of the sewer device itself. We're pretty solidly against the hole-in-the-ground technique (we do get our water from a well, you know), but it's a bit tough finding an outfit that knows how to install the mini sewage processing stations that you can get here. We'll find someone for sure (or have the Tajiks dig and put it in ourselves, I suppose), but it's still a bit up in the air. Everything else is more or less on some sort of track.
And finally, as for paperwork. We should finally have our building permit in our hands on Wednesday/Thursday. That was the last snag we hit in getting our semi-legal (that is, set up and approved by the head of the local energy department, but not, strictly speaking, done according to any sort of rules) power strung out -- we've needed that for several months now, and the Tajiks are happy to hear that it is not far off. The final delay in getting the building permits was the sign-off from the office of the fire chief. The building codes require a 15-meter minimum spacing between wooden structures. Anyone who's seen our place and can imagine a meter could see that we don't quite make that at all -- primarily because of the wooden construction in our neighbor's yard right up against the property line. But we do have a reasonable spacing (I'd say on the order of 5-6 meters, which is plenty, compared to the 5 feet you frequently see in Portland), and the fire chief proved to be someone with whom a deal could be made. So, last hurdle jumped on that, and we should have power inside of the next two weeks. That's a big one -- particularly considering we will have gotten it done in less than a full year, which is way under par.
Of course that means we'll be that much busier.
