Watt's been happening in June?

While we wait for the building to start, a few things have been happening at Turtle Falls. Here's a pictorial summary of the activity over the last couple of weeks.

The second phase of excavating, in the area for the garage and screened porch, revealed more fantastic landscaping stones. There will be no shortage of rockery with which to restore the "natural" surroundings.

That's one monster rock. Makes the digger look not so big.

I love this picture...Ras doesn't let the noise of the excavation work dampen her joy of reading a chapter while soaking up a few rays of sunshine.

Relaxing at Turtle Falls means a whole different thing this year!

At the moment, it looks like a meteorite has landed and ripped a hole in the forest...certainly not the cozy, woodsy feel to the place that we enjoyed last summer. The remaining trees that needed to be removed came down as well. A huge pile of the brush was burned in the foundation pit. And yes, we had a burn permit...newly issued from the township the previous day!



Looks somewhat crater-like.

Ras gets busy helping with the tree removal. 

Alistair gets busy burning the brush. This photo was taken with  
the TurtleCam webcam, hence the blur.

Some of the excavated material had to be moved off the site.


photo credit: Mark Raison


The well has also been drilled. We ended up with a 150ft (45.7m) well with a very excellent flow rate. We got lucky as many wells in the area are double this depth.
 

The truck with a rotary drill gets positioned. 140ft was drilled with this truck.

photo credit: Mark Raison

The cable tool, or pounder, was then positioned over the well site.
The final 10ft was drilled with this truck.

photo credit: Mark Raison

It's a thing of beauty, especially after 2 years of collecting rainwater at TF.

The dock got delivered from its protective winter storage spot on the other side of the lake. The guys had it installed in no time. The swimming hole is finally open!

 

Nothin' but blue sky and treetops up there!

And last, but not least, I made another trek to the top of the internet tower to install the cell phone signal booster. We've had enough of the "can you hear me now" and the dropped calls...or the no calls at all! Internet phone options, like Vonage or MagicJack, leave a lot to be desired too. We can't depend on the phone companies to get around to improving the cell service in this area any time soon, so we took matters into our own hands. An online search resulted in finding a commercial grade signal booster. They guaranteed an easy install, excellent reception and a full refund if we weren't completely satisfied with the product. Who could resist such promises? Amazingly, the install actually was a breeze, just like they claimed, although my legs were a bit...no...a lot!...wobbly after the climb, two times. The promise of excellent reception was also true. We've gone from no bars to full bars on both our phones. That's one antenna providing improved service to two phones on different carriers. How cool is that? It helps that the tower is tall enough to get the antenna above the treetops, for now...

Hallelujah, we can hear you now!

I'm hoping that's the last thing we have to install on the tower...it's getting crowded up there!

More later,
Mimi