Happy New Year!

In an earlier post, I was saying how none of our snow had melted. Forget that. Yesterday saw a significant reduction in the amount of snow left on the ground. In town, we saw double digit temps above zero *C, which must have also resulted in very warm temps up at the house. Some of our driveway is now exposed dirt and gravel, and around the house we are surrounded by a moat of what will soon be mud if the warm weather continues. The dogs are not very "cuddly" when they come in from their run - both are soaking wet and have very muddy paws - yuck!
Over the last few days of our Xmas holiday break, we did manage to complete about 75% of the wiring and splicing in the basement. I still have to clean up the wiring around the panels in the mechanical room by installing plywood on the walls and building a shallow cable raceway between the inverter/charger and the AC distribution panel. This raceway was suggested by the electrical safety inspector as a good way to achieve "covering" some of the larger AC cables, as required by the electrical and building codes. I also have yet to install the external vent for the battery box. I have all the pieces required and have installed the vent outlet in the box itself. I just need to cut a 2" hole in the wall and route the pipe through it. Once these items are checked off the "hit list" we can arrange for another electrical inspection. That done, we can insulate and vapour barrier the basement. Yay!
I managed to install the pendant lights over the peninsula and Carol's chandelier over the dining room table. We picked up some nice LED chandelier bulbs at Costco, of all places, but had to order the G9 LED bulbs for the pendants from a place in China. They arrived the other day and work great. The pendant light bulbs at 3.5 watts each, only use 10% of the energy that the original halogen lamps used. The light quality is about the same, however, when dimming them, they seem to become brighter in steps, as opposed to the smooth transition we got with the halogens. These lamps are rated as "dimmable with standard incandescent dimmer switches" (as opposed to the much more expensive electronic or magnetic dimmers). The 4W chandelier bulbs don't exhibit this "stepping" phenomenon. In fact, we both think they look and work at least as well as the "regular" bulbs that they replace, giving us the equivalent of 200W of warm, white light for a "cost" of only 20W.