Rain, rain, go away

The building permit was issued last week, and John is setting up an office in the house.

He brought in a chair and put Mother's Christmas cactus (which is in full bud) into his nook. He's using our scaffold as a table and the windowsill as a desk. There's an electrical outlet nearby that hasn't been disconnected, and the internet wire will come into the house right here, too. All he needs is his electric teapot, and his command center will be ready for action!

Because of all the rain, John didn't schedule the excavation until Thursday, December 3. He said there should be five days of dry weather after digging so the footers can be poured on dry soil. Well, there was torrential rain on Wednesday, the day before digging, so the soil was already saturated.


Then it rained and snowed all day Saturday, the day after the 2 Steves finished excavating, and this is the mud pit that resulted:

I think the straw was supposed to stabilize the exposed soil.


The concrete footers are scheduled to be poured tomorrow into all this mud. And it's supposed to rain again this Wednesday! Needless to say, I'm worried.

On a more positive note, I want to commend Steve and his son Stevie for their exquisite workmanship. They dug down through several feet of soil and managed to preserve the main water line and 2 underground electrical wires, none of which was marked with caution tape or in conduit. Bravo to you both!

During the excavation, John uncovered a hand-dug well underneath the side porch that's coming down. It's inside that hole in the foundation, and it's really in amazing shape, with beautiful stone-lined walls.







The well is 5 feet in diameter, 28 feet down to the surface of the water, and has 12 feet of standing water. Wait till John hears our idea about what to do with it. I know this will confirm his suspicion that we're nuts, but wouldn't it be cool to cover it with transparent glass blocks and shine a light down into the well? Then we could hook up the old pump which we brought home to our house in Boyertown a few years ago to use as a water feature in our garden.