Category: The house

A typical North Carolina wellhouse. In this abandoned wellhouse, the well is gone, but it would have been under the porch. Inside are the milk troughs and places for food storage.

In a comment here, a friend asks what’s the difference between a pumphouse and a wellhouse.

The pumphouse is a small building to house (and keep from freezing) the parts of the water system that aren’t in the well. That includes the pressure tank and the pressure control switch. It’s a necessary part of the water system.

A wellhouse was a common outbuilding in the days before electricity. The well itself, with a windlass and bucket for drawing water, generally was near the wellhouse door. Inside were water troughs in which the milk jars were stored and into which cool water was poured a couple of times a day to keep the milk cool.

I have no real need for a wellhouse on my place, but I do need an outbuilding. I decided that an outbuilding in the style of a wellhouse would not only be practical (not least because wellhouses always have a porch) but also would work well with the style of the house. For rural people who had neither electricity nor ice, the wellhouse was the refrigerator as well as the source of water. It was always built in the coolest and most shady spot available. My grandmother’s wellhouse was overhung with a willow tree. I may do the same thing, for the sake of tradition.

1. The truck that brought the septic tank got stuck in the soft soil and had to be towed toward the septic tank hole using the backhoe’s hydraulics. Notice the chain between the backhoe bucket and the rear of the truck.

It’s hard to think of a more unphotogenic process than putting in a septic tank. But in spite of all the hole-digging and trench-making, the process takes less than a day. Some statistics: The tank holds 1,000 gallons. My system, as spec’ed by the Stokes County environmental health department, called for four drain-field trenches totaling 210 feet in length. Each trench is 50 to 60 feet long.

2. A little closer to the hole

3. Down into the hole we go.

4. The septic tank is now in place.

5. Looking over the top of the septic tank to one of the drainfield trenches

6. The septic tank has been buried, the trenches have been filled. I’ve planted a mixture of annual rye, fescue, and white clover, then covered the bare earth with straw. With the spring weather I hope to have grass before long. The cap is the clean-out port for the drain-field filter. This is a fairly new feature in septic tank design. The filter keeps solids from getting out of the septic tank into the drain field and helps keep the drain field healthy and flowing freely.

This heavy piece of crockery holds 1000 gallons.

The septic tank, and 210 feet of drain field, got installed today. Another mess. But I got it cleaned up, and seeded, fairly well by the end of the day. I’m too exhausted to post more photos tonight, but tomorrow I’ll post details and a photo sequence.

This is a big deal. It means that now all the life support systems — water, electric, and septic — are in place, and I can move my travel trailer up to Stokes and start living (and working my tail off) on my land…

Bob, my brother, finished putting the trim around the eaves and soffit of the pumphouse today. In the photos I posted last week, some of that trim was missing. So here’s a new photo with all the trim in place.

Bob with the finished pumphouse.

Notice that what Bob calls “the birds,” the facing on the soffit, has a slight gothic curve, as does the trim over the door. We’ll use these same themes on the wellhouse, which I plan to start early next month. I’ll let the wood cure a bit, then I’ll apply some sort of preserving finish on the white pine siding. I’m not yet sure what that finish should be, but to me the right answer is — whatever they would have used 60 years ago.

The new pumphouse. My brother, Bob, designed and built the pumphouse to harmonize with the house and the other outbuilding, which of course haven’t been built yet.

Tuesday was a red-letter day. The guys from the plumbing company came out and installed the pump in the well. I now have water. There’s a hydrant behind the pumphouse for gardening and such, and there’s a hydrant for the trailer.

The water hydrant behind the pumphouse.

The photos below show the process of building the pumphouse and getting the pump in the well.

This photo is from last week. Bob works on the pumphouse outside his workshop. Bob prebuilt the pumphouse in his shop so that it would be ready to deliver and assemble after the water system was working. Bob’s design for the pumphouse is an amazing combination of attractiveness and utility. He prebuilt it in sections in his shop, so it took only a day today to set it up and nail and screw it all together on site today.

The pump guys lower the pump into the well. This was Tuesday.

One of the pump guys tests the new water system.

Bob assembles the pumphouse. This was today.

The building is well insulated.

Hmmm. Notice any gothic elements anywhere?

The evil machine at rest. It started raining as stone was brought to the driveway, and work had to stop. So the bulldozer waits in place for the ground to dry.

Is there anything uglier than a ditch? I spent hours today working on starting grass in it.

This has been a stressful week. I had far from recovered from having logging machinery on my land. But the septic tank guy and others convinced me that I had no choice but to remove the stumps and that the time to remove them all is now. I found someone nearby with heavy machinery, including a track hoe and a bulldozer. He said he’d prefer to use the bulldozer for the job. He promised that the stump removal would not take away my precious topsoil. We agreed that he would recut the drainage ditch along the road that was crushed by the loggers. And we agreed that he would make a driveway, which he said needed to have a wide enough turnout and wide enough culvert that heavy trucks bringing building materials wouldn’t crush the culvert or run off the driveway. He said he could hide all the removed stumps and brush out of sight beside a ravine at my back property line. He said that it would be a two-day job. The arguments for bringing in a bulldozer are about making a temporary mess now for a better-looking and more productive outcome later.

We agreed on a price, and he started on Monday. By mid-afternoon Tuesday, he was done with everything but hauling the three truckloads of stone for the driveway. Just as the truck arrived with the first load of stone, it started to rain, hard.

I got dripping wet trying to spread annual ryegrass seed on my exposed topsoil. I more or less got it covered, though. The stumps and brush had as he promised magically disappeared. I drove back to Yadkin in heavy rain, certain that the downpour was washing gullies all across the acre that the bulldozer reworked. I took the day off on Wednesday and didn’t go to Stokes. It wasn’t raining, but I knew the ground would be too wet for me to work, and I resisted the temptation to go all the way to Stokes just to see what the rain had done.

Thursday morning I got my first look at everything since the bulldozer and the rain. A miracle: no gullies, no messy runoff, and the little stream was running clear. What a relief. I spent the rest of the day sowing ryegrass and fescue on the ditch beside the road. I spread a straw blanket over the entire ditch. It’s 200 feet long. I put a bale of in front of the culvert. The ditch is unlikely to wash out now. I hope the grass will grow.

As soon as weather permits (more rain is forecast for tomorrow) I’ll give the same straw-blanket treatment to the exposed earth beside the driveway.

The crew that is to put the pump in the well has been delayed. Now they say they’ll be out Monday or Tuesday of next week.

I can already see that I’ll be spending a lot of time this spring getting grass and wildflowers to grow. I’ve decided not to plant the apple trees until fall.

Pulling the wire to the power post

Energy United came out today and lit up my power post. I now have electricity! Which means that I can get a pump in the well and have water soon.

The finished power post

The newly installed electric meter reads 0000 kilowatt hours. There are two 220-volt outlets, a special outlet for the trailer, and four 110-volt outlets.

The trailer will be parked where the Jeep is sitting. It’s a pretty nice campsite if I do say so myself.

I had the tree guys, with their chainsaws and chipper machine, back for a second day. Things look much better, but I still have a lot of brush to deal with. Still, all the chainsaw work is done. The “downer” logs are sawed up and ready to cart off, and all the little injured trees that were sticking up in the air and looking pathetic have been cut down. We used some of the wood chips to pave an area for the trailer and Jeep.

The mystery magnolia now has room to grow.

I have no idea how there came to be a magnolia tree in the middle of the pine woods. It was crowded by brush and honeysuckle, and it wasn’t getting much light because of the pine trees overhead, so it’s a bit spindly. Still, it appears healthy and absolutely determined to grow. We cleaned out all the competition. I’ll feed it. It’s got lots of light and space now, so we’ll see if it will fill out and take off.

Chipping away at the brush pile

To the loggers there were three grades of wood: good logs for the sawmill, sorry logs for pulpwood (but hauled away, at least), and the sorriest logs of all which were left behind for me to saw into firewood.

Two guys and a chipping machine (with a little help from me) spent seven hours today cleaning up after the loggers. We made a dent in it, but much work remains. We’ll spend another day at it tomorrow and see how things look.

The electrician has finished the temporary power post. The county inspector has approved it. As soon as Energy United lights it up, I’ll have electricity. Once I have electricity, I’ll get a pump in the well — and have water! — as soon as possible. Energy United, by the way, is an electric co-op. I haven’t had a chance to look into how their service and rates compare with their competitor, Duke Energy.

This is a 6″x6″x16′ post. It supports 100 amps of service, with lots of outlets, both 110-volt and 200-volt. It wasn’t cheap.

Evan, my great-nephew, helps me gather brush.

Cleaning up after the loggers is the next priority. I hope the tree guy will be able to bring the brush-chipping machine this week, but I’ve got to work around his other jobs, and the weather. Rain is forecast for Tuesday. I also need to find out if the septic tank man can go ahead and install the septic tank, or whether he needs some stumps removed first. I’d like to get the septic tank done right away, if possible.

The Jeep has become a beast of burden.

The loggers are gone. They left behind a big pile of brush, plus tree-limb litter all over my top acre. There also are a bunch of “spikes,” small trees they ran over that are too injured to live and that look really bad. Fortunately the loggers didn’t disturb much topsoil. There’s an exposed area of soil of about 2,000 square feet where the skidder ran back and forth to the loader, and there’s a spot on the lower end where the skidder got stuck and spun its wheels to get out. It could be worse. They did almost no damage to the road. That’s good, because it means the neighbors won’t be mad at me.

I hauled 12 bales of straw and put straw over the exposed soil. I got a 50-pound bag of annual rye grass seed and spread the seed with an old-fashioned hand-cranked seed spreader, which I bought at the hardware store in Germanton. Next steps: Get a guy with a chipper to give me an estimate on how much it will cost to turn the brush pile into mulch, and get my great-nephew to help me gather up the downed limbs and trim out the spikes. When the litter is picked up and some rye grass is growing, things will look much better.

I’ve been thinking hard about how best to heal and use the upper acre. Right now the plan is to get some wildflower seed in bulk and fling the wildflower seed in April after the danger of frost has passed. Then, at tree-planting time in the fall, I start a little hillside orchard. The area looks bad now, but it would make a beautiful little hillside orchard. The slope and light are perfect for that.

Also yesterday, the electrician brought the temporary power post out, and I helped him put it up. It’s ready for inspection by the county. As soon as the inspection is done, the power company will light up the post, and I’ll have electricity. Once I have electricity, I can put the pump in the well. I think I’ve got to get rid of some stumps before the septic tank can go in, but I’ll talk with the septic guy next week.