On Tuesday, July 25th, we were expecting to have the septic tanks installed. The installer came in the morning and dug a big hole for the septic tank.

While he was working the plumbers came a day early to finish installing all the fixtures and the water filter systems. When the septic tank supplier showed up with his huge truck to deliver the first of two tanks it made for a very busy place.

Unfortunately after the tank was lowered into the hole, it was discovered that it had a defect. It was then loaded back on the truck and returned to the manufacturer for repaired. The tank will be repaired and recertified and this week. he septic system installer had to fill the hole back in because it would be safe to leave it open.

We will attempt to install the tanks on Monday July 31. Since the Elgin blocks for the field were delivered today, our installer should be able to start on the field soon after.

It has been a very long time since the last update. The primary reason is because of the Okanagan Lake flood. Most of the work stopped as we watch the lake rise to a level which was 77cm above its normal max. For a while it appeared that the water table could get high enough to cause water to enter the lower floor, fortunately it never got that high. For the last 6 weeks all of our energy has been going into trying to preserve our wharf and our property. One storm dislodged about 38 feet of our wharf from the pilings and it ended up at a neighbour’s beach. The piece that was removed was the part that attached to the shore so we now have an island only accessible by boat or swimming.

We were able to recover large pieces and they have been lifted onto our property.

However, since the storms during the flood conditions have destroyed or seriously damaged most wharves on the lake, it may be a while before ours is restored.

A second storm a week later took out a section of our retaining wall including the walkway down to the beach and started rapidly eroding the bank that was behind the wall. With the help of many neighbours and our son we were able to stop the erosion during the storm.

One of our neighbours was able to secure some rip rap rock that was left over from when Summerland had to protect one of their roads. The next day we had two dump trucks worth of the rock put along the shore where the erosion was happening.

The lake level has started to drop so we felt that we could proceed with getting the house finished. At this point much of the finishing has been done. This includes interior railing,

painting, tiling (except grout sealing), most electrical (except the pump room), appliances (except the dishwasher)

and most of the HVAC. The most significant work still to be done to make the place habitable is completing the plumbing and installing the septic system (which couldn’t be installed because the water table was too high). Exterior painting and the deck railings also still need to be done.

We have been looking at a number of septic system solutions. Building a support structure to allow parking over the field proved to be very expensive. We also considered connecting into a communal septic field down the road. However, getting the pipe from our place to a holding tank would be difficult. We are currently pursuing an approach where the field is done as 4 rows rather than 3 and we use concrete septic and pump tanks. This arrangement would give some more parking and would give access to our yard should we need more visits from dump trucks.