Back in February, I finally got an electrician to come out here to give me an estimate on getting power to my property. We spoke about a mid-May installation, then the weather got unseasonably good, so I asked for late April, but early April worked better for him, and I got all excited about moving back to Haven early.

Well, it’s late April and there’s still no date on power going in. 🙁 This is not the electrician’s fault. He has been fabulous about staying on top of this and I have no reason to believe he’s trying to get out of the job. The problem is the weather keeps regressing.

He emailed this morning to ask me to call SaskPower to open an account with them for a new service. He thought he could do all of that for me, but SaskPower requires that a new connection request be made by the person who will be paying the bill. He gave me the phone number and the instructions to get through the menu maze, so I got a live person in the correct department in under 15 seconds.

I had to give my land description since we don’t have addresses here and got yet another hurdle. For some reason, they have my neighbour as having service on my lot! His lot and mine used to be one and were subdivided, so that could explain this problem, although there’s also the possibility that the RM (‘town office’) gave him the wrong info seeing as my neighbour is a tenant, not landowner. I gave them another land description provided on my certificate of title and that was helpful to confirm that I am indeed the owner of my lot and that the issue with the neighbour is a clerical, not legal one.

So the SaskPower lady put me on hold for a minute to speak to a supervisor. She came back and said that they have people whose sole job it is to sort out issues like these (!) and that we could go ahead with my application. I gave her my legal name and mailing address, confirmed the service going in (100 amps), and that there is likely not going to be any cost for me to have the meter put in because I have a pole and lines right at the property.

The next step is to schedule the installation of the meter. My electrical guy can do that. I provided SaskPower with his name and telephone number and they gave me a notification number to give to him to make his call easier. There’s a 10-business day delay between the call and the installation of the meter.

I was then asked if I had called ‘SaskEnergy’ and I thought, oh no, another hurdle! It turns out that they are the ones who provide natural gas service, which I am not dealing with this year. So there’s nothing to do on that end, nor am I having a telephone land line put in by SaskTel.

I am beyond ready to get back to Haven, but with the weather yo-yoing as it has, it would be stupid to go back without power on the lot. Never mind the giant pile of gravel I’m still working on…

Yay for my electrician, though! I am really pleased to have found him and I suspect I will have more work for him in the future. And yay for SaskPower as they have been super easy to deal with, a far cry from my experience with Hydro-Québec.