Power Is In! | Disking & Getting Our Land Ready

We’re making some progress on the property! In this video, we’re disking the fields, getting the land cleaned up, and getting power brought out to our future homesite. Power was another major infrastructure expense. The utility company originally quoted us about $21,500 to bring a 400-amp service roughly 450 feet across the property. They told us we could save around $8,000 if we handled the trenching separately, so we hired someone locally who trenched the entire run for about $1,000. In the end, what started as a $21,500 project cost us about $14,500, saving us roughly $7,000. We also seriously considered solar. A system large enough for what we wanted was going to cost around $30,000, and we would still need temporary power while the house was being built. Renting a generator throughout construction would add several thousand dollars a month, so for us, it made more sense to put that money toward permanent utility power that would already be there, reliable and ready to use. With what electricity costs us in our area, the return on investment for solar just didn’t make sense for us at this point. That doesn’t mean solar is a bad option, it just wasn’t the best financial decision for our particular property and build. We also had the option of running overhead power, which could have been simpler, but honestly, we just didn’t want to look at power lines running across the property. Since we plan on being here for a long time, we decided it was worth putting the power underground and keeping the view as open as possible. Thank you for watching! #homesteading #countrylife #idahome #idahopower #idaho