Home Work: Day 6 of 6 (Wrapping Up)

For the final day of my week at the house, I started by going to pick up the well casing extension that we bought yesterday, but needed to be cut this morning. The piece probably weighs about 100-pounds, is three feet long and is about 1/4″ of solid steel. So what does Bill do when we get it back? He sets it up so we can drill a hole for the pitless  adapter.  Thankfully, he’s got the tools to actually drill through this kind of material – cause I sure don’t! After some maneuvering and a careful, slow, drilling process, we got the hole drilled and filed clean.

Next, we put the extension over the existing well casing to see if the pitless adapter height lined up with the existing water pipe. BOOM! Nearly spot on! This means that the final installation won’t require additional digging or more pipe adapters, each of which is a weak point in the system. We simply need a longer steel pipe (easy enough) and this can all get installed. Bill already welded on the casing collar (bottom) and will tack weld this onto the existing casing in the coming days. This whole rig allows me to properly bury the water lines and main well while giving access from above the ground. The pitless adapter allows me to screw in a “T” that’s about 3′ tall, and pull the entire system up though the casing as needed in the future. There wasn’t enough time to complete this today, but we’ll be able to finish it up in about one more day, now.

Back to the demolition, I had purchased a Sawzall per Brad’s suggestion and now the demo of the exterior siding (that was inside the house) was moving along much more quickly. In just a few hours, the back bedroom wall (where you see the trash can) and most of the bathroom walls (left of that room) were gone. I also removed the studs between the kitchen (near, left) and living room and put up a temporary support. The wall isn’t technically a bearing wall, but since the house has odd construction, can’t be too sure, so caution is wise and adding a few 2×4’s until I beef up the proper supports is worth the peace of mind.

The bathtub inadvertently became a catch for all the demolition material, but I cleaned this out easily and managed to fill the dumpster at this point. I left the bathtub intact and just enough of the wall to keep the shower in place. Once I have running water again, I can use these to at least wash up on construction days before going to my neighbor’s house. And, of course, having a working toilet on site again will be really helpful.

All in all it was a solid week at the house. I got most of the demolition completed, all of the well replacement set up and ready to go, some preliminary construction work, and a review of possible floor plans complete. I’ll post more about the floor plans as I move forward. For now, I’m just happy to have made notable progress since I won’t be back for several weeks. Then, come late June, I want to get up to the house  three out of four weekends a month to make more progress.