Back Hoe

Today was yet another day working on water systems. Only this time we brought some help.

We met up with Rick this morning, a member of the Kelly Thompson community, and heading up to the dry lakes to do some digging. Rick has a back hoe which we were going to use to dig some BIG holes. First, we went to the Dry Lake. We have a siphon pulling water from the lake but we wanted to install another pipe line from the creek so that we could fill the pond and siphon water out at the same time. We put in a "t", two valves, and about 30 feet of PVC. We also added a new water box to accommodate the new valves. When we finished, it looked great.

Next, we then headed over to Chamberlain Lake, on the other side of the ranch. Our mission here was to simply dig a hole to try to find a pipe that was leaking 5 feet under ground. It turned out it wouldn't be that simple.

What we found was a pipe, but no leak. Still there was water seeping into our hole so we kept digging, following the pipe further up hill. We then decided to see if there was any water in the pipe. We cut it. No water. Rick then suggested we use an air compressor to cause enough pressure to clean out the filter at the top of the pipe, which we all assumed must be blocks -the reason the water to run outside the pipe. After some time of shooting air into the line with no results, we decided to keep on digging.

One big hole (and one big mess) later, we found the end of the pipe, which was underground, two feet above the water table. The excess pipe explained why the water was leaking down hill and why there was no water in the pipe. We closed out the day by trimming the pipe down to the water level and gathering up our tools. Tomorrow we plan on installing a cylinder into the ground where the pipe end is so that we can check on it when we need to. We also have a pretty big hole to fill in.

It was awesome having Rick help us today. He and his back hoe were a huge help! Thanks, Rick!