Sigh... After all I said about my spa wiring being well beyond code requirements (based on discussions with two different electricians), I actually looked at the electrical code. Also felt it was prudent to order a copy so this never happens again. Nope - I've got a bit of a problem on my hands. The line I laid won't work. The trench is already filled, but I'm glad I found out before any more concrete went in. The best thing to do is abandon that line and start over, though I can still use it for normal electric service to the backyard - it's utterly ridiculously over-rated for normal 110V service. No inspector in the world can question it for that use. It's also possible I won't have to trench again. Instead I could bring in a line from above, via the patio. That will get me within two feet of the (future) spa without a trench and then I just need to figure out how to bridge the gap. But I'm going to read the entire code book cover-to-cover first. And to think that if I had hired any of these licensed electricians to do the work they would've gotten it wrong also. Can't trust anybody nowadays...

If you recall, I was only thinking about putting in a spa, and the reason for all this electrical work was that I wanted to have the wiring in place 'just in case' - because the location where the wiring needed to go is getting covered over with new concrete and I'm not likely to want to jackhammer it up. Perhaps it's time to sit down and decide once and for all whether I'm going to have a spa or not, and precisely what the other wiring options are. I will say that if it comes to another trench I'll likely get a trenching machine to do it next time.

So I went home for lunch and had a good long look at everything. The solution to the above problem was staring me in the face the entire time but I didn't realize it, because I didn't realize I had a problem. In fact I have several - and the solution is to put the spa somewhere else entirely. With one stroke I knock out close to ten design issues that have been nagging me. And I can still use the electrical line which I so laboriously installed for standard service to the patio. I'll work it into the design somehow. You see there's another little trivia bit of electrical code at work - the spa must have a disconnect switch greater than five feet from the side of the spa and no greater than ten feet. I knew about this but was going to go with 11.5 feet and pray. If the inspectors didn't like it, I'd slide the spa over onto the lawn a couple feet until they left. The alternative would have been to put a disconnect box sticking out of the middle of the lawn or existing patio. By putting the spa in a different place, I solve these and several other little nagging problems I've been churning over. And they are all problems that I can now defer until such time as I actually buy the thing - if I ever do. Changing the location only has one drawback - it puts the future spa into a line of sight from the kitchen window of the neighbor behind me. I can solve this problem with a few well placed landscape features, as I was already dealing with because the 'old' location was in a line of sight from another neighbor's kitchen. A couple of bushes, a tree, a higher fence, whatever. Everything is starting to make sense now. There's only one small section left where the vision isn't yet complete.

Any of you who have been involved in audio the last few years may know about the little black box called a Sonic Maximizer which is made pretty much exclusively by BBE Corp. Most of us got our first taste of this technology with Phil Collins' "Edge of Night" release. It basically takes sound and makes it sound better. It's full of black magic computational algorithms which adjust frequency bands and stereo separation in tandem so that the sound has a bit of an edge to it, kind of like the contrast knob on the TV. Everything just kinda' jumps out at you, from the bass guitar to the cymbals. It's hard to describe beyond that except to continually point out the fact that it just sounds great. Anyway I bought one for the studio because you can't be a serious recording artist nowadays and not have a sonic maximizer. I mean you're trying to make things that sound good, and here's a black box that takes almost anything and makes it sound good. It's a no-brainer. So then I thought about it and it's like this box is sitting here, why don't I pump my CD changer through it? Maybe the TV sound also. Why not everything in the house? So I did and lo and behold (doh...) it all sounds better.