The Big Move

Well, the day has finally arrived… our house build starts :).  It wasn’t the best day weather wise to decide to build as the wind was still howling from the storm and it was sleeting.

We met our builder on site today to decide how high we wanted our main floor level to be and, with that decided he set to work.  Within the hour his digger driver, Terry (the same Terry that did our driveway) had taken off the top soil from the whole house area (and a bit more) and was starting to dig the hole for the basement.  They did all this whilst battling with the weather.   There was the occasional break in the weather and we ventured from inside the car to watch the progress a bit closer.

It is amazing to watch Terry with the digger, he handles it with such precision for such a large machine.  He could take a 1 inch layer off the top of the soil if you asked him to, but I guess that’s what comes with 30 years experience.

Whilst Terry was digging the hole our builder, Jeff, was marking out the locations of the different rooms for the basement.  Together they had half the foundation dug, marked out and leveled by the end of the day (and they only started at 13.00) – just 2 guys.

Its all very exciting seeing the build finally start, knowing that in a few months time there will be a house that we can walk around.

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Yesterday was a very exciting day – we got to dig for water 🙂 – well not us personally but a very big rig and a couple of guys.

This is the next step in our house build.  We have a driveway, now comes the water.  At 9am 2 trucks turned up at our land to dig our well.  For anyone who has never seen a well being dug it is actually quite fascinating.  We were planning on watching them for a little while and coming back when it was done – we stood there for 2 hours while they drilled into the earth.  A huge drill was attached to lengths of steel and the rig pushed it down into the soil.  It chucked out all of the waste material from the back of the truck – the poor guy keeping the well clear of debris was covered.

The plan was to find water before we hit 100 feet down.  That didn’t happen.  We watched as Brian (the guy running the rig) added another 20ft pole to the drill, then another….then another… we finally hit water at 156 feet down.  Brian tested this by drinking off the shovel he had been digging with – nice.

We weren’t finished there though.  To ensure that your well continues to flow for years to come – they have to drill further down to allow the silt to collect without blocking off your water seam.  So – our well stops at 180 feet down.  We have a really good flow of water – about 15 gallons per minute.

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