Water, septic, solar, & framing

Our shipment from Hiltz at Energy Alternatives arrived on Wednesday morning. With the help of Craig Palmer, one of our neighbours up into Knutsford, we got it all loaded into our pickup so I could deliver them up to our place ready for installation. Carl, the framing supervisor, was going to help me put the 224W solar modules up onto the roof to form our 1.8kW array. The weather was not the best for working on our steep roof - it was very windy so we agreed to try again the next day (Thursday). It wasn't a wasted trip though. Jason, our well and septic guy had just moved his crew up to do our well and install the septic system. After doing his initial excavation, he was having concerns about the viability of the spring to provide our domestic water! Yikes, that's NOT what we wanted to hear. He had pumped the hole dry and was going to leave it overnight and then pump it out and measure the quantity the next morning. We decided not to panic until after the results were in.
I went up again on Thursday morning, hopeful that we could do the roof work and trying to remain optimistic about the water situation. Before going to open all the boxes containing the power equipment, I walked up to the spring to talk to Jason and get the verdict. He met me with a big grin on his face. The had pumped the water out of the well and measured over 1,000 gallons! This was only 18 hours worth as they had pumped it dry before leaving the night before. He was excited, but wanted to test again the next morning after a full 24 hours. Obviously, 1,000 gallons per day would be plenty for Carol and I, but might be a bit sketchy if we had lots of guests and a large contingent of farm animals to deal with in the future. We could always take advantage of the original settlers' well about 1/2 km below the house, to provide the extra water we needed so we were ecstatic with the 1,000 gallons per day.

[As I write this post, it is Sunday, July 3rd and the results of the second well test were again, positive. They measured almost 2,000 gallons in the full 24 hour period!.]
After opening all the boxes containing the solar stuff, it became apparent that we were short about half the bolts needed to bolt the modules to the racks. I had to return to town to pick some up, so we deferred installation until Monday. Since Carl was going to have to be back anyway (he thought they would be done last week but a variety of small challenges has left them needing a few more days on site) it would be the smart move. They were able to install the back door (I neglected to take a picture) but the two sets of french doors are larger than specified on the plan (74" wide instead of the spec'd 72") so their framing will have to be adjusted before they can be put in on Monday.
Alex, Carol and I went up on Saturday to do some clean up in the house and work on filling some of the holes in the driveway. Jason had obviously come up on Friday as the septic system looked pretty much complete. The access cover and the vent for the tank were evident and you could see the six trenches containing the drain tile had all been backfilled. One more item off the list!