Finally! Water and septic.

Written by Daniel A. Bergamini

Monday, 18 October 2004

Pictures are up! I had to work for an hour Friday (15-Oct-2004) night, so we didn't get out of the city until after 10PM. We got to bed late, and off to a little late start Saturday. The LaValley delivery guy made his normal early delivery of the 2 bedroom and bathroom doors. There were a few beds we went to look at so we hooked the trailer up to the truck. The mattress didn't work out but on the way back we stopped at Vermont Salvage and picked up a huge cherry hardwood set of cabinets. It has all kinds of corners, hanging and floor cabinets and even a few double sided ones for an island (or peninsula in our case). It practically filled the Suburban and trailer, a quick bite to eat at the bakery in White River Junction and off we go. We stopped at LaValley and picked up some final supplies to hopefully finish a few of the outstanding projects like the 2nd floor wood stove, bathroom, main sill pipe and the well. Saturday is always tough on me because we spend hours getting ready to work since we never have everything we need. We got home, covered the trailer since it was sprinkling and I got started on finishing the plumbing for the bathroom sink and installed the toilet. The lack of sun pretty much ended the day for us. Surprisingly, I hit the ground running on Sunday, got out before 8AM for coffee and breakfast sandwiches from the country store. Elaina was the one who got breakfast in bed for a change. I started on the well, which to my knowledge only needed to be wired to the panel. I ran a little 10/3 over to the box they installed and ran a garden hose from the spigot at the base of the pressure tank. Just so I could see what I was doing, I installed a box and outlet in the basement so I could run some 48" fluorescent lights while the generator was running. Fired up the generator, went to the basement and the lights wouldn't come on and the ($40) GFCI breaker I installed seemed to be broken. Shutdown the generator, installed a normal breaker and light in the basement! Switched on the breaker for the well and slowly it started to hiss, which I fortunately realized was coming from air sneaking out of one of the elbows from well that wasn't even loosely tightened. Tightened it up, and no more hiss with the well running. While I was playing with all this stuff, Elaina got 2 of the doors (one bedroom and bathroom) and frames stained. They came out really nice, and Elaina has calmed down a little about painting since it's been a month since the last time she did it. We ran the generator for most of the day and tried to pump all the chlorine they pumped in out of the well. This made a little mud pit, which will become relevant later. I started on connecting the 2nd floor drain pipe to the main sill pipe that goes out to the septic tank. After I got most of the stuff precut, Elaina and I purpled and glued it all together. Then we headed upstairs and connected the wood stove to the chimney with some stove pipe. It's a messy process, but we got our skills up to par downstairs. We only had to make one cut, and it came out very nice, can't wait to light the first fire in it next weekend. Elaina decided to do some planting while we were finishing up, and decided she wanted to walk through the mud pit. She went down 2 feet at least in one spot and needed me to bring her some new shoes and help her out.

Last Updated ( Monday, 18 October 2004 )