Well, but no water - but we do have walls in the basement and a flooring system for the main level

Today brought the bad news that we'd hit the magic mark for a well depth without finding sufficient water to use.  They drilled through a large amount of slate and some other softer rock but throughout that period, they were only able to find about 1 quart per minute flow rates.  The magic number we reached was just over 600 feet which is much greater than any of the other houses in the neighborhood drilled and they have flow rates from 4 GPM to over 25 GPM.  We now have to determine the next steps which may include fracking the well to see if that breaks enough rock to get a decent flow. Our other option is to use this well for ground source heat pump (geothermal) and drill another well elsewhere on the property  We're waiting for the fracking expert to provide an assessment and cost details before we make the decision.  What the fracking process does is blast pressure into the well at set intervals to attempt to break the rock and open channels for the water to flow into the well.  This is not the fracking that uses chemical solutions to extract natural gas from the shale and has raised a huge level of discussion here in Chatham county. (in other words this is not the same as the controversial version of fracking)

On the bright side we now have a flooring system throughout the house and they also put the entire main floor system on this morning.  Once that was done the wall braces were removed opening the house up.  Tomorrow we should take delivery of the next installment of lumber which will be sued for the stud-walls and roofing system for the house.  That will be a welcome thing since the heat wave has continued.  It's hard to imagine but standing inside a styrofoam cooler on a bright sunny day that is also over 100 degrees simply intensifies that heat.  We've been providing water and Gatorade for the framing crew to ensure none of them drop due to heat exhaustion.

The business end of the drilling rig - note the purple water which signifies shale.

This was the state of the system yesterday morning - most of the basement walls were up but the floor joists had yet to be installed

This is the view fromt he basement after the floor sheathing had been installed on 1/2 the house

The view from the front door - there will be a wall about where the seam  on the wall panels is to the right of the large window.

This is the view from the top of the staircase - most of the dirt you see will be  gone since it's the backfill for the  overdig so it will be a clean view of the woods behind the house.

Here's the view from the family room window wall.

This is the last time you'll see these bracing poles on the house.  Shortly after this picture was taken the flooring system was complete allowing the braces to come down.

This is the same view without the bracing and with all the sub-floor installed.  The missing squares of foam will be replaced in the morning before they start on the stud-wall that will again lap around the inside of these walls.

This shows that you can get a lot of bvehicles on this particular site - we had the drilling rig, the support vehicle, the grouting truck, the crane, the flatbed a pickup, a van and a sedan all on site at this instant.  All that was missing was the portable toilet service truck that showed up a short while later!