Building the Homestead: Drilled a Well, Beams, and at Home in the Trailer

We now have a $4,000 pipe in the ground. We decided to drill the well now, even though we’ll need to finish the cottage before the pump and pressure tank can be installed. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Thankfully, there’s more to this than what you can see here. It was fun watching the big drilling rig come in, set up, and drill down 440 feet. At about 400 feet, the driller said he hit the “Roubidoux” (pronounced ruby-doo here in the Ozarks) aquifer, which produces about 50 gallons per minute minimum. However, the well we put on will only draw about 10-15gpm. He drilled down an additional 40 feet to allow sand to settle and the water to clear. It was pretty cool seeing tons of crystal clear water gushing out the pipe towards the end.

The drilling is done with something like a very large hammer drill connected on the end of 20 foot lengths of steel shaft. Huge amounts of compressed air are then pumped down into the hole blowing the debris out the top. It was the compressed air that blew the water out the top, the aquifer filling in the water behind it. Here’s what the drill looks like in action:

Here’s a couple of additional “well drilling” pictures. Sorry gals, this is for all of us little boys:

Building

We’re back to working on the building. After pumping out the water in the holes that the posts were set in, we filled in each hole (with a shovel, of course), then took down all of the braces and batter boards. Next, I marked the posts using my laser level so that they are all in the same plane. Using a jig made from three pieces of plywood stapled together and a skill saw, I cut off the posts leaving the long posts in the corners and one each along the front and back walls.

Finally emerging from the ground, we cut and placed the beams on the short posts. Beams were made by nailing 3 or 4 2x10’s together, depending on the span. Then, as a precaution, I installed 2x6 braces on each post connecting each side of the post to the beam, as shown here:

Now that’s a nice beam! You can see the 4 2x10’s comprising the beam and one of the braces connecting the post to the beam. These are now installed on each side of the beam for each post. I used 16 penny nails in my nail gun to tack the braces in place, then drilled and inserted 1/2” carriage bolts, two per brace. Finally, nailed 40 penny galvanized nails, six to eight per brace. It shouldn’t go anywhere and I know, I over-build. Here’s most of beams up:

You can see the long posts on the four corners and one each in the middle of the front and back walls. The first beam (closest to the front) is for the porch.

Although this picture doesn’t show it, I’ve finished all of the beams. Tomorrow, a friend with a tractor will be out to smooth the dirt between the beams so when the crawl space is done, we can lay plastic on the dirt and not cut through it with rocks.

Our Life in the Trailer

So far, the trailer has been pretty comfortable. The weather has been pretty nice, only into the low 40’s one night so far, so the furnace is keeping up. It’s still a bit cold in the back of the trailer where the bedroom is. We’re really trying to not have to stay here through the entire winter, or at least that if we do, it will be a milder winter than last year.

Here’s Connie and the Skip-Bo cards (she’s probably winning). We’re up to about 115 games since September 2007. She’s ahead by six games.

In the spirit of fair play, I have to include a picture of me:

This was the good one. Sorry.

As you can see, we got a new dog. Meet Sammy. He's a, well, a dog. Not absolutely sure of his parentage. But I’ve been accused of having questionable parentage myself, so we can’t hold that against him.