Building Walls and Drilling Wells
Work on framing the house slowed down a little this week. It’s all a matter of sequencing – It seems that due to sickness in South Carolina, the roof trusses are a little delayed. And they need to be installed before the roof can go on. Meanwhile, work at another of Bill’s projects (the house in Harbour Pointe, which is about 4 weeks ahead of us) has slipped behind schedule a bit. So, to solve both problems, the framing crew have spent three days on the other project installing windows there, and the building at Porter Springs has been suspended a double win for Bill. We have most of the internal walls on the first floor framed and up, and rafters for the roof are already in place over the garages.
The well driller was in action on site on Monday. We need a well, as the nearest water mains services are down in Dahlonega, 8 miles away. Everyone round here has a well. We were a bit concerned as a number of neighbours have reported the need to drill to great depths (600 feet seems normal) and even then only get a limited flow. The US government estimates of average water consumption is 80-100 gallons/person/day (and that does not include topping up the swimming pool we have planned!). We had a personal goal of 3 gallons/minute (to give a bit of a buffer for the summer when things can get rather dry). When the driller inspected the site a week back. he was very knowledgeable about the area as his company had drilled wells for water on most of the nearby properties over the years. He was confident that we had good prospects of plentiful water (without the use of water divining tools like a bendy stick or crystal pendulum). But in the end, all is in the lap of the gods how deep he had to go and how much water flow would result.
A GUSHER – We had a record breaking day on Monday. The well driller rang to tell us, he was so excited. He had expected that he might have to go down a minimum of 350 feet to get a decent flow. Actual he only got to 250 feet when he hit water in massive quantities – a gusher. 100 gallons per minute, so much pressure that the drill couldn’t make any more progress. He said that he had never drilled such a productive well before. At least that removes worries about filling a swimming pool. There is a video of the final moments. The well has now been capped off until the house is ‘in the dry’ with walls and roof and the necessary controls, filters and tanks can be installed.