8 July 2015
Busy day today! Jimmy arrived along with a heavy rain shower
at 7:30 and began digging the waterline trenches from the wells to where they
enter the house through the basement wall.
Tom Roorda and Bret Williams (Tim’s son) from Spafford and Sons pulled
in about 8:30, bringing with them sunshine and an enormous drill with which
they bored two 2″ diameter holes through the north basement wall. Once the
trenches were dug and sanded, the Spafford’s folks put in the two 1¼″ water
lines (one from the supply well and one to the return well) and the 10-3 UF electric
cable that will power the supply well pump. To be safe, and also because Jimmy
had found a boulder just a few feet down and a few feet from the foundation
that he could not move (and we are thankful that that rock wasn’t in the
cellar hole!), we put 4″ of Blueboard over the waterlines for the first 4 feet
out from the foundation wall and then 2″ Blueboard for the next 20 feet (at
which point the lines were a good 6 feet underground). Fingers crossed that that is enough
insulation to prevent the lines from freezing… ‘cause no water = no heat with a
geothermal system. Jimmy left once the
trenches were dug. While waiting for the Spafford’s folks to finish doing their
magic, James used the Kubota to backfill the trench for the electrical conduit from
the house to the walkway. We put red “Caution: Buried Electric Line” tape over
the conduit just in case someone ever wants to dig under the patio. James really liked the Kubota! Then James backfilled the waterline trenches
with his excavator. I was headed towards the RV thinking of lunch and found a
strange delivery truck in the driveway.
“Can I help you?”, I said to the driver.
“I’m here to deliver a water heater”, he replied. “Oh, okay…”, says I. Assuming that said water heater was, in fact,
for us and would need to go into the utility room via the shop door, a door
that I had cleverly blocked with a ton (literally) of 2 x 4 x 16 lumber the
other day, Chree and I set to work moving that lumber into the shop... all 150 pieces of it. So much for lunch! While we still were engaged in that effort,
Dennis Senesac from Ryan’s arrived... 15 minutes early for our meeting. Understand
that Dennis has a well deserved, freely acknowledged, reputation for NEVER being on time for a
meeting. After getting over the shock,
we had a very productive two hour discussion about how the HVAC system is going
to be configured. While that was going
on, James started adding another course of rocks to the big retaining wall between
the house and the lake so that we can raise the backyard grade level up to
cover the septic tanks. Tom and Bret
returned and replaced the motor on the well pump (don’t know what they had put
down the well for the 72 hour 20 gpm test, but the new one is 1½ horsepower,
220 volts, 3 phase, 30 amps). They said
that both wells have about 35 feet of water in them (from the surface to the
bottom of the casing), which translates into approximately 60 gallons. Jimmy came back (twice) bearing 200 gallons
of water (each time), which he put into the septic pump tank. Other than the obligatory after work swim
with the dogs, I think that’s everything that happened today…
