Go With The Flow

Since I get a number of people questioning me about the water system for my house and since somebody gave me the word 'water' for the old word posts, I thought I'd kill a number of birds with one stone and do a big post on my whole system.  I may have shown all this before but it was not totally completed and would have been a long time ago, so here is the final, completed system.  I also wanted to address one other thing.  Several people (not here) have inquired or hinted that maybe my recent health problems were due to the fact that I do not use city water.
Well, 1.  I've had my water tested 3 times, once before ever even starting to build, and the results always come back fine.  I always kinda laugh when I remember taking the first batch down to the county to have them test it and all the people in the office were passing the bottle around, marveling over the cold, clear spring water.  They were very curious about where I got such fine looking water.  And yes, I know how it looks doesn't matter, I just thought it was kinda funny.  They were also amazed to know it was a spring rather than a well, although this county is eat up with natural, artesian springs.  Anyway, my water filters down through the mountain behind my house and bubbles up through some cracks in the rock about 150 yards from the house.  In the photo above you can see the overflow from the cistern we built.  It has always overflowed like that and in fact, it and yet another spring not far away form a small creek that eventually connects with my bigger creek along the driveway.  You can also see the copious amounts of watercress that grow in the little pool below the spring.  It's very good in salads and stuff.

 This is the cistern and the cover for it to keep out leaves and ....critters.  Anyway.  2.  I've had the same health issues on and off for years before I ever moved here.  The second worse bout I had, just like what happened last year, was about 14 years ago and I was living in another town and on city water.  3.  Just in case, I've been tested for all kinds of bacteria and crud such as toxoplasmosis, cryptococcal infection etc etc.  and it all comes back negative.

The water is fairly clear, although we do filter it extensively, and maintains a good level of 4 or 5 feet all the time.  If you look carefully behind the pipe you can see the huge rock a couple of feet down that I had to form the shelf over to lay block on.  Now, I know most people would think that is not near deep enough but we have never been able to overcome the flow no matter how much water we run.  In the beginning I actually tried to outrun it by watering the garden, washing my truck and various things all at the same time but it always recovered quickly.  I think I estimated one time long ago that it produces something like 5 gallons a minute.  And again, that may not sound like much but it works; we always have water.  There is one thing that can overrun it though and that is the big, gas powered trash pump but that's okay.  Sometimes that comes in handy. 

This is the cute little pump house, that still isn't finished, and that sits about halfway between the house and the spring.  It is also partially underground with concrete walls so that helps insulate it.  We first tried installing the pump in the basement of the house but then determined that the pump just was not strong enough to pull the water uphill that distance and also over the hill that is between the spring and the house.  So, we shot some grade and determined the best place was right at the apex of the hill.  Once it tops the hill, the pressure tank is basically pushing the water towards the house at that point. Just as well.  The pump is not noisy but it does make a little racket and I'd rather have that away from the house. 

Here is the pressure tank and the pump in the lower right corner.  The pump is a Goulds and I highly recommend them.  This thing is a workhorse.  Knock on wood.  You long time readers may remember way back I had some issues with the water system for awhile there.  A pipe busted and I don't remember what all.  I do remember being terrified after finding these things that the pump had burnt up.  Nope.  Hooked everything back up and that thing just keeps on chugging.  The pressure tank is a WellSaver and I'm very pleased with it also.  I bought one of the largest they make so that the pump would not need to actually run that much.  I think this is the 86 gallon version although it could be over 100.  At any rate, with this size, and the way we use water, the pump might only come on 2 or 3 times a day and it takes it about 5-7 minutes to fill it back up.  With the way the pump house is separate and all it would be very possible to have all this run off solar power, which I would really, really like to do.  But...that takes some money.  Maybe one day.

Once the water enters the house it splits and one line goes towards the garden.  The other line runs through this point of entry filter that uses zeolite as the filtering medium.  Most water treatment plants also use zeolite.  Someone was once aghast that I had to use such a filter and it must be because the water was so bad.  No.  This county is full of natural springs but it's also full of sandstone, which is easily degraded by flowing water.  To keep the sand out of my water supply, and thus out of my washing machine and other parts that it would wreak havoc on, I use this filter.  Also, as I have shown before, most of the top 3/4 of Alabama is heavily laden with iron ore and all that water running through red sandstone can give the water a reddish tinge, mostly after a very heavy rainfall.

Which leads us to the final filter.  This is one of those fancy-smancy carbon/ something filters and basically it filters the water crystal clear.  It currently resides down in the basement and we fill up large containers to use for drinking and cooking water.  And yes, I know....why not just install this on the kitchen sink??  Well, I can't stand crap on my kitchen counters, finished or not, and I especially can't stand that stupid rubber line that has to go to the faucet head so I'm not looking at that mess in my kitchen or mucking up my nice, new kitchen faucet.  When I finally finish the kitchen counter tops and permanently install the sink and all we will install an under-the-counter version of this.  Yes, I know I'm kinda weird but ya'll should know that too by now.

Now, that may seem like a lot of trouble to some folks.  Or, they just don't feel right about not having city water.  You know, water that comes out of the ground is ...nasty.  (like it all doesn't at some point) Well, I look at it like this.  With all the prescription drugs, chemicals, pesticides and God only knows what else that people wash down their drains, that have been proven to show up in other people's drinking water, I think I'll take my chances.  Plus, there have been numerous times when everybody around me has had their water cut off for long periods, due to the county working on repairs etc., and I still had water.  I had just rather be able to control my water rather than someone else.  And yes, if my power goes out so does the pump but that is one thing Big Red is for and he has done a fine job.
So, there you have it.  Yes, it was a major pain in the ass at times and probably the only thing on this house that actually caused me to shed tears but it works great now and I'm happy with it.

Sometimes You Can't Teach A New Dog Old Tricks

I thought I'd give ya'll a break from the spring workings; for a while anyway. Jack topped out the last of the concrete fill yesterday and is working on backfilling now, so it is sorta boring. I do intend to do a little follow up with some drawings and more info though.
Anyway, here's Chigger with a little comedic relief. She finally wore out her old frisbee, to the point of ripping out the center. She still wanted to play with it however, but would get it stuck over her head like this all the time. She could not seem to figure out how to get it off either. We got a good laugh out of it but I would eventually have to free her from her circle. I felt kinda bad too because it kinda seemed to hurt her feelings if we laughed too much and she would try to hide.

She really didn't want me to take these pictures either but I managed to snap a few. We did buy her a new frisbee but it doesn't fly as well as this one did. At any rate, she still has fun with the new one.

As some of you may have gathered from recent comments, it seems I am back on for the out of town job, so I have been busy once again getting ready for that. One reason I'm not helping backfill the spring box. I've had more stuff to get ready this time but am still waiting. Apparently, the steel has not come in for the job, plus, they are having trouble finding somewhere for me to stay. The area I am going to is one that was hit hard by the tornadoes back in April, so many of the hotels etc. are filled up with people rendered homeless by the storms. And, obviously, I can't room with any of the guys who are already there, so accommodations for just me are a little slim. With any luck Daddy Rabbit has found something starting Monday though. The job we are doing is not a result of those storms either. It was started months before that hit and being mostly concrete, did not suffer any damage although it was in the midst of the storms. So, I'm still just waiting and trying to get what I can done around here until then.
The garden is winding way down but I am still trying to preserve, pickle, dry or cook whatever I can. Making plans for what to plant for the fall and winter now. We also ordered 25 meat birds which should arrive around Sept. 6th, so that will be a new experience. They other chickens are doing great and producing lots of crap and eating lots of bugs but other than that, not contributing much yet. The hens from the bunch should start laying in a month or so however, so that's something. The birds that are coming are actual meat birds and should be harvested within about 8 weeks of their arrival. We'll have to do this when I come home on the weekends.
So, things are never boring around here I guess! Always busy, busy. And now I need to go throw so I can keep some kind of inventory in my stores about town.

Almost Easy

I believe we have topped out. We ran out of concrete before we filled absolutely every cell in the blocks but we are real close and will only take a few more bags. I am very pleased with the state of the spring and water system now. I think it all went well and turned out great; despite being extremely hard, physically, to do. I feel, and I think Jack would agree, that I have been beaten with a 2 x 4.

I was not pleased with how that shelf came out over the rock ledge so we bought 2 more bags of the quick setting concrete and I went back down to shore it up. Basically, I just mixed it up down in the hole and jammed it in the cavities while Jack kept the water pumped down. You can see one of the main inlets right in front of my right hand.

This set up very quickly and I was pleased with the result. By doing this I also confirmed that the hole is also big enough to actually do some work down there. I mean, it's not terribly comfortable, but it is workable.

I am still astounded at how fast the water cleared up and how clear it is now. The only murkiness is from the concrete residue and when this clears I suspect the water will be almost crystal clear.

This is standing at the spring looking up towards the pump house. Of course you know, all could not go well. As sure as Murphy's Law exists, no good deed goes unpunished and if everything is coming your way you must be in the wrong lane, we did have some problems. After the spring was done and we were trying to clean up, we hooked everything back up in order to use the water to clean up. In my exhaustion I forgot to reopen the valve above the spring. I have a very good pump and it tried very hard to do it's job and in doing so cracked the connections both going in and coming out of it's housing. It didn't take long for me to realize what I had done but by then water was running everywhere out of the pump. So, Jack spent most of the day finding parts to fix those connections. Finally, about 5 p.m. today he finished the connections and we had water again. Hopefully,it will go a looooong time now with no problems. Anybody that has been following this blog for sometime knows I have had problems with those connections before, so Jack used some different type this time and redid the whole setup. It certainly looks better.

This is my cute little pump house during the renovation. I still need to put siding on this thing.


An inside shot of the pressure tank and pump. This is a Gould pump and I would highly recommend these things. This one has been through pump hell and still going strong. Hopefully, it's life will be much easier now.


This is looking from the pump house, up through the woods to the house. The spring is about 200 feet from the house and at a lower elevation than the house. The pump pulls the water up a hill to the pressure tank and then the water is pushed further up the hill and over the crest, where it beings to fall back down at about 70 feet towards the house.

So, while Jack was finding parts I was getting my own stuff together. My company worked out their crap and now I am back on again for the out of town job. I told them I was not leaving until I got this put back together though. They threw the wrench in the works so they can wait on me now. Everything seems to be going well though and if the pump does not blow up overnight it looks like I'll be heading out sometime tomorrow. I am exhausted and grumpy but maybe I can make it through the rest of the week. It should be an interesting time anyway. I'll catch up with ya'll when I can!

One Step Closer

Well, first off, I appreciate all the kind words and compliments from you folks in the last post. Ya'll are sweet. Although, I did have to giggle a little at Island Rider's comparison to a Amazon warrior. I felt like something from the Amazon alright; maybe a giant leech or slug after being in that water for 3 days but not a warrior.! I look at those photos and think I look like hammered cat shit. I certainly feel like hammered cat shit; especially after today.



It was somewhat frustrating at the start today but we got it worked out and once the footprint was down it was just stack, stack, stack. It did take me a little while to get that first run situated correctly and level but my elevations were very close and it all tied in well with the shelf I poured yesterday. I was somewhat disappointed to see that some of that shelf did not set well and was crumbly. This was probably my fault for mixing it too dry. I know that's hard to imagine, it being submerged in water but High/ Early sets FAST. Fortunately, it was on the side where I could actually set block on the floor of the spring, so I just chipped out that crumbly and ran block. I then filled that blocked completely and filled up flush with the top of the shelf. I wish I had photos but you know....
Anyway, you can see how far we got. And, the first 5 runs are filled 100% and have rebar doweled through them. I know some of you may notice that I did not actually mortar the blocks together but with them being in water that's kinda not going to work well. The grout filling them, with the rebar will be plenty sufficient to hold them in place. It's almost like just pouring solid concrete.
Now, some of you may ask, why didn't I just pour concrete walls? Well, if I had used Sonatube, for a round form, the cost would have been much higher. If I had square formed it with plywood the cost might have been about the same but the aggravation of getting a concrete truck back there, the labor of forming and wrecking that form etc. made the block just seem like the easier way to go.


Now, the top 3 runs in this photo have not been poured. We ran out of Sackrete after pouring over half of it but it will be good to let that set up tonight and then pour the remainder tomorrow. You can see here how much clearer the water is already. It's kinda amazing to me. I knew it would clear up but didn't really expect that. As soon as all the concrete sets and such it should become very clear. Oh, the big pipe there and the block will be taken out later. The pipe stubbed up is just to keep me from dropping concrete or kicking gravel into the inlet when I'm working. I'll try to get some better pictures as it clears and we finish up.
Well, today was really exhausting for me. Jack made material runs while I wrecked the form and started stacking block. I stacked and poured while he kept me supplied with material. It worked well. Except for when I fell in first thing this morning (that will wake you up!) and then later when I sat down in the water and forgot my cell phone was in my back pocket. Oh well. I only buy the cheap kind anyway!
So, we hope to finish with the structure tomorrow and I can even do a little cut drawing for ya'll to better show what I did. For now, I have mixed me a good whiskey sour and I am going to relax.

Down In A Hole

Well, we are making progress. Still a ways to go but things are going fairly well and we've not been sucked down into a quagmire yet. To look on the bright side, the water is at least so cold that it keeps us cool while we are working. It is so cool, in fact, that a light fog is almost always present when we are in the hole; a mist formed from the heat of our bodies meeting the cold air rising off the water. I keep meaning to take a thermometer down there and check the actual water temp.

We take turns going down in the hole to dig. One goes down and the other hoists the buckets of mud up and empties them. Works pretty good. After having it firmly implanted in my brain that we were just going to widen a round hole and somehow stack block, I realized that nothing said the hole had to be round...It's funny how you get stuff stuck in your head and don't see alternatives. So, we squared the hole up, which will make setting block in a square much easier. DUH! Note how muddy the water is in this photo. We had stirred up quite a bit of silt and such by this point. Also, note the large rock behind Jack. You can't tell here but under that rock is where the inlet is.


Jack rigged up a cable with a pulley and such for the bucket, which helps greatly, but it is still pretty rough work. Last night my left shoulder was so sore I could barely move it. I either worked it out or something because today it is better.


Here you can see the water flowing in, somewhat. It has been hard for me to get many good pictures because we are usually both either in water or covered in mud. Not really when I want to have a camera in my hand. This crack between the rocks is about 8 inches at the widest point. I would guess this spring puts out about 5 gallons a minute, maybe. In the winter it flows heavier. This large rock threw a little kink in my block laying plans so I had to form a shelf over it.



As you can see here. At this point we have basically finished excavating the walls (it's about a 5 x 5 foot hole). We scooped out all the loose stuff on the bottom until we were below the elevation at which the water comes in. I crammed a 6 inch diameter piece of PVC into the inlet and ran it out to about the middle of the hole and turned it up with a 90. That's what you see with the bucket over it. This will protect the opening of the spring. We then filled the bottom with about a 6 inch layer of crushed stone. This hardened up the bottom remarkably well. Before we would sink several inches into the muck while we were working but now you can walk around just fine. I was very surprised that little bit of stone worked so well. You can even see how much that stone layer helped clear up the water. I mean, it's not clear yet but it's better than it was. So, I then threw this form up so that it was tight against the face of that rock, squared it up best I could, staked it in place and kicked it off. We used stone rubble to fill up most of the space behind the form and over the PVC inlet but used big enough chunks that the water can flow freely. I am not trying to force the water to come in through the PVC pipe only but rather to simply block out a space were it always could if the areas around the pipe become clogged. I then used smaller stones to kinda seal the top on the rubble so that the concrete would not seep down into the inlet and seal it off. As an added insurance, we mixed the concrete fairly stiff so it would not ooze much. I used a High/ Early mix so that it would set quickly. We kept the water pumped down for a while but then let the spring fill back up. Keep in mind, concrete does not dry; it sets by a chemical reaction so water being on it does not hurt it. I also threw a few pieces of rebar in the shelf to help it and had stacked 3 layers of block on the outside to get a grade by, which I marked in the inside of the form. This, hopefully, will work out so that the blocks laid on this shelf will lay in with the other walls with nothing needing to be cut down. Since I can manipulate the gravel on the floor of the spring I can adjust the blocks to meet correctly but this should make it very close as it is now.
One other note about this photo: we take the foot valve and all out of the spring every morning as we begin work so nothing is in the way. This was taken towards the end of the day, after we had replaced the foot valve and reconnected the water. Fortunately, the spring cleans itself well enough that we can use the water by the time it refills. Now, we don't use it for drinking or cooking yet but it is fine for bathing etc. and it is filtered before it comes in the house. We do keep buckets of water on the deck though, to dump over ourselves at the end of the day in order to get clean enough to come in the house in order to take a shower. Heh.


If you look close enough you can see the little peepers that were staring at me most of the day. He is not happy that we have invaded his spring. I tossed him out twice and he is right back in there as soon as I turn my back. I was hoping that he would hop down to the creek, which is not 20 feet away, but he likes this hole.

In the afternoon the chickens come down to inspect things. Big 'Un, on the right, gave us his approval. Chigger thinks it's all great fun because it gives her an excuse to go play in the creek and mud while we are working. She won't go down there unless we are nearby.

This was taken at the end of the first day. Today was not much better. I suspect my clothes are ruined so we have been wearing the same ones over and over! Yeck! What a mess! Hopefully, I will start stacking block tomorrow and will be finished by the end of the weekend.

Hole In The Ground

Yep. That about describes it. A hole in the ground. So, this is what has occupied my thoughts and time the past couple of days and will continue to for the next several. Wish me luck for the time has finally come. The weather, the money, the time has all lined up and there is no more putting it off. I know I should have done this waaaay back before I ever even built the house but I was anxious to get moved in and the spring was working fine. And it still is now technically but the walls of the hole have continued to slowly erode and so it is time to permanently fix this. The large concrete pipe you see there was originally going to be part of the fix, a major part but it boiled down tot he fact that that pipe was going to cost me between $700.00- $900.00, even though I got it for free. See, it's not really possible to move something like that ( in any controlled manner anyway) without heavy equipment. So, after ruminating over about every other options possible, we are going to bite the bullet and do this by hand. I shall post about it later if I survive.

I suppose most people would gag to know this is where I get my water. The spring is actually quite clean and clear though. It has a little debris in it here because I had been mucking around the hole and knocked some leaves in. The orange paint marks is where it must be dug out to. You can see I have already started on that some. So, I shall return about this later but it may be a couple of days.

Thanks for all the opinions ya'll gave on the gable end thing. One thing I didn't mention that might make a difference is that the area I was questioning about is right over the front door; so it is rather noticeable. I know I didn't show this is the photo and it just looked like a random gable on the end somewhere.

I know also many of you may be thinking, why am I still here? I, being me not you. Wasn't I supposed to go out of town to work? Well, funny you should mention that. I got all ready to go, down to being packed and then no one called. A day went by, then 5 and no one called. They basically drug up on me. No, I was not really pleased. However, they assure me that I will go back to work at least for long enough to make it worth my while for doing all that paperwork etc. So, what do you do? I was looking forward to maybe having the cash to finish the house completely but now at least, I don't have to be away from home. Oh well.

Catch The Wind

This is my new project that I started on today. Biggest freakin' weather vane I've ever seen. It will be about 20 feet tall when I am finished. Did the cleaning today and straightened out some of the bent up places you see. It's a combination of stainless steel, bronze and copper.

A big storm did this. It's not taking near the time I thought it would so I may be finished with it by Friday afternoon. If I do finish it early and they have no immediate work for me, which is very possible, I have decided that it is time for a very big adventure. Everybody say, "Road trip!!!!"

Best I could do to show the whole thing. It's a very interesting piece. When I restore an original sculpture like this I always try to take the care with it that I would want somebody else to take restoring a piece of mine after I'm gone. I think it is going to turn out well.

This afternoon when I got home, I felt compelled to walk down to the spring, just to see how things there were doing. When I got there I was a little surprised to see that the water was so clear, you could see rocks about 18" below the surface.
Been a long time since it's been that clear. As I crept closer to the edge about 8 little frogs jumped screaming into the water, probably peeing all the way. Oh well.


*Donovan

Different People

A couple of the comments from that last post kinda took me by surprise. That is to say, I guess I've been doing what I've been doing for so long, that I find myself just thinking of it as commonplace. It's not until I get around new people or a group of just women and we start talking about our lives that I see that I'm a little unusual and that, to those people, running a backhoe all day wouldn't be boring. Or pouring concrete or something along those lines.

I've been amused several times to come across the blogs of other women that proclaim they are so odd and unusual and then when I start reading, what these women usually write about is raising kids, cooking, gardening, sewing etc. Now, I'm in no way belittling these women or making fun; I'm not. I just think it's kinda funny. They see themselves as so 'not normal' because they can the foods they grow or like goth music and I guess to some that is odd but to me, they sound pretty normal. Now, I'm interested in cooking and growing food, but I need to know what snacks can I stash in my nail apron because we are pouring 300 yards of concrete today and probably won't get to stop for lunch. And I'm interested in cleaning methods and such but because I need to know how to get dried blood and concrete out of denim. Or hydraulic fluid. Now, I do like shopping! Buying that shiny, new pair of steel toes really gives me a rush. I just love that new leather smell!

I'm also sure there are a number of readers that just stop by because of that same urge that makes some people slow down to see a car wreck. They can read about my life and say, well, at least I'm not as stupid/bizarre/mislead/ such and such as this woman and that's okay really. If it makes somebody feel better to laugh at me then that's fine. But I'm sitting on almost 20 acres with a house and it's all paid for, so I'm laughing too.
So, I won't be afraid I'm boring ya'll anymore and I will answer those couple of questions that I did get in the comments.

The great progress I was making at the first of the week crashed and burned about halfway. I have been having a little health problem for over a week and it finally got the best of me a couple of days ago, so I just crashed and slept a lot due to some meds I had to take. It was nothing major, and nothing with my heart, so I'm doing better now but I have not accomplished anything with the house since my last postings. So much for my new goals! I was going to work today but this morning I discovered a water problem again and spent the afternoon fixing that. As soon as I get a good break in the weather I'm going to have to do a major overhaul of the spring where I get my water. Then i had to split some more firewood because this next week is going to turn cold again. If it's not one thing it's another or just the same damn thing over and over again.

So, anyway, you guys...is this a deer scrape? I found this tree down by the spring and after searching, I finally found a couple of tracks near it. I've never seen a scrape before but have heard the guys talk about them. It's not very far from the house.

This is one of the tracks and what I'm poking at with the stick is where I could see the deer's dew claws made an impression in the mud. On the other track, the main hoof print was as long as my index finger. Now, I have big hands so it was a fair size track.
I was also very happy to see this! This is the little stream that is formed from the water that overflows from my spring and it is full of watercress. My spring is an artesian well; the water boils up out of the ground and about a foot below grade, there is a little overflow outlet that runs all year around. The watercress loves this cold, pure water and right now it is really going bonkers. Yes, I do harvest this, in case you are wondering. When it's small like this, it is great in salads. If you wait until it gets a little bigger it can get kinda hot!
The past couple of days that I've been in a drugged haze, I have thought of some new things I want to post about so I'll try to get on that soon.

*No Doubt

The Fixer

The water is clear and flowing freely once again. The hornets are dead. The pump appears to be functioning without defect. I have taken a shower.

I discussed a few options with Allen and decided to abandon the spring all together. It had collapsed to the point it is only 4 or 5 feet deep now. I am using the other spring now but it is a temporary measure. A permanent solution is going to require some further planning, concrete and a trackhoe. What I should have done to begin with.
My earlier attempts to kill the hornets had apparently been effective so I did not have to deal much with them. They did give one dying gasp as I was working though, when the queen flopped out of the nest onto the ground next to me. Freaking thing must be 2" inches long.
I replaced the fittings and plumbing leading to and from the pump, extended the pipes to the other spring and hooked all that back up and reprimed everything. Then I discovered that the fitting going into the pump had busted also. About this time Allen drove up and offered to repair it. I accepted and with one final trip to the hardware store and 40 minutes later, the pump fired up and water flowed. It then proceeded to spit mud and gunk out of every faucet and opening in and around the house.
We flushed out the whole system and I ran some bleach through the lines for good measure, back washed the filter and all seems to be fine.
Thanks for all your comments and I will answer some of them further in another post. I would like to say that I do realize and accept that I have to do this work myself because I did opt to walk away from the relationship I had. That was my choice and I still stand by it, so I have to suck it up and do these things when they come up and I accept that. It's not that hard usually, once you get going. But yes, when stuff like this happens it is nice to have someone there and I hope you women out there appreciate your man, IF you have a good one, that takes care of these things. I know women have plenty to do around the house (I do both after all) but most of it still rates higher on the comfort scale than wallowing around in cold mud, in the rain, repairing 2" plumbing lines.
I also had at least 3 guys guiding me through written and spoken means, as what to do next (tho I decided ultimately what was best) so I was not totally alone and I am grateful for that.


*Pearl Jam

Dark Hole Again

Last weekend we pumped out the spring repeatedly in an effort to remove as much of the sludge that I allowed to wash down into it. The recent heavy rains had the underground springs moving swiftly which helped tremendously. The spring would recover quickly each time we pumped it down, in fact, the pump could never quite overtake it, so it kept all that muck stirred up good and allowed it to get sucked up and out. I was quite fascinated to see the bottom of the spring. The photo is not very clear but maybe you can make out something about it. The spring consists of a vertical shaft that goes down about 10 feet. There it meets a horizontal shaft of about the same diameter that flows into and out of this vertical shaft. They both appear to be lined with big boulders of sandstone. There are 2 other separate horizontal shafts up closer to the surface that allow water to flow out a little bit down the hill. This is partially where my little spring creek comes from.
You can kind of see how muddy the water was as it came out. In this photo, the rate of flow had slowed down somewhat due to the line clogging some. At times it spewed water 2-3 feet in the air as it left this hose. We emptied the spring many, many times over the course of the day, sometimes letting it recover for an hour or 2. We removed a lot of sand and muck and also leaves and roots. During one of the sessions I saw an enormous crawfish running around in the bottom! He was probably wondering what the hell was going on... there had been water here a minute ago!!
I was ecstatic to see how fast the water flowed into the spring at the bottom. It would refill in just a matter of minutes. Of course, I know it slows down at times, depending on how dry it has been but I think this is a very good source of water. Anyway, I think it did a lot of good. I have been checking the spring on and off this week and it is getting clearer and clearer. In fact, you can see clearly 16" or so down into the water. I think I may do one more good cleaning session maybe next weekend, before we reconnect the supply lines. The alternative spring is working fine; the water is very clear and the filter has been able to clean itself properly with this clear water. I set it to purge itself once a day for about a week to get all that sediment out from when the water was bad and it seems to have cleared up. So, things are looking up. Knock on wood.
This 3 day weekend has been great and we have just about finished with the deck handrails. Tomorrow I need to finish up the rebar at the entrance and apply a coat of linseed oil to the whole deck and it will be done! Time to start bringing out the potted plants and such. I will post some photos of the finished product a little later.
Hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend if you celebrate Easter and even if you don't! The weather here lately has been a beautiful celebration of spring itself. Lots of things budding and blooming and sprouting. My tomato seeds that karl sent me have sprouted and I am very excited about that. I shared a couple of the varieties with the Switchman, as he is an avid gardener also, and he reported to me the other day that all of his had come up. He seemed quite happy about it. I can't wait to taste these new varieties.

*Cowboy Junkies/from album "Open"

What's The Matter Here?

This is the creek that runs from my spring; it is supposed to run clear. I think my efforts to prevent more mud from washing into the spring have been successful, however, so much is already in there that the recent rains just keep it stirred up as the water eventually makes it way through it's underground crevices and into the spring. Last Sunday it got so bad that I have just had to temporarily abandon the spring and jump over to another one. There are 2 springs on my land. The other one is very clear but it is a surface spring; the water just bubbles out from beneath a tree. It is a large volume of water but it is more exposed to the environment. Any deer or possum walking by can just poop right in it or whatever so I don't want to stay on this water long. It is my plan to help the spring purge itself by pumping the water out and as the spring fills back up, pump it out over and over until it is clean. I don't know if this will work but I have to try.
Last weekend also had me fighting it out with the wasps. It warmed up some and I came home to find about 20 wasps in the house. I had had it with those damn things so it was war for about 2 hours. I think I got most of them and stopped up the bottom of the clerestory wall so any more can't come down that way.
I still have to fix the spring and I may have to redo the media in my water filter but things are improving. It is kind of two steps forward and one step back all the time. This weekend I got the posts for the deck handrails and have them cut etc. They are almost ready to start installing. Tomorrow I must attend my brother and his wife's 25th wedding anniversary party so I will not get anything done on the house but I don't see them much as it is.
It is gradually getting warmer here so I planted a row of lettuce and 2 rows of brussel sprouts the other day after I came home from work. I plan on starting my tomato seeds soon. I am very much ready for warm weather and longer days.
Another carpenter left the job to go to another one so I am one of 2 left. Not sure how much longer I will be there or where I will go afterward. The Switchman must have noticed that I was looking kind of down at work Monday (after the wasp fight, etc.) and he yelled for me to smile as he went by on a train. I guess I didn't do a good job of it because he frowned and asked did I not have anything to smile about? I just shook my head as he was out of earshot at this point. About an hour later he came out and found me to ask what was wrong and so I told him some of my frustrations. I tried not to rant, lest he think that I am more of a nut than he already believes. He did offer a sympathetic ear though and cheered me up some.
Hey, speaking of switchmen and trains... did you know that locomotives are full of sand? I know you know, Woody, so you don't get to say! We installed a huge sand silo at work and we heard that it was somehow used for the trains but I did not understand until the other day that the locomotives actually have big compartments up front and carry it with them!

*10,000 Maniacs/ In My Tribe album

High Hopes

These photos are a little out of sequence so just bear with me here. I don't have the patience to try to fix them. This is my attempt to fix the problem I am having with rain runoff clouding my spring. Basically, I am trying to build a dirt cricket. A cricket is a small roof that diverts water behind a chimney for those of you who may not be familiar. I discovered 2 holes in the ground on the uphill side of the spring and I believe the muddy water flowing down the hill was then entering the spring underground before it actually reached the mouth of the spring. At least, that is what I am hoping. I hope by backfilling the uphill side it will cause the water to run around the spring and not down these holes or into the mouth of the spring. I put that meter box over the shutoff valve so that it is still accessible, plus the pipe needed to be covered anyway to keep it from freezing.
Here I have backfilled a good bit of the area after putting down a layer of poly as extra protection. I need to lay up another course or two of the stone on the uphill side so that there is a curb of sorts for the water running downhill to be diverted around the spring.

This is the beginning of the project. I got some Sonotube from the job (leftovers) and it was the perfect size! It is 2 feet diameter. Sonotube is great stuff if you need to pour something round. It comes in many different sizes and you can get it at Lowe's or some other similar devil store. Now, in this instance, I poured on the outside of the form where you would normally use Sonotube to pour the inside. Don't laugh at my formwork; it was difficult to get that stuff down in that crevice! And I had to cut the Sonotube open to get it around the water line. Anyway, a few nail pins (also invaluable) and we are ready. I didn't get any photos of the footing but I'm sure you can imagine.

I thought the tube was going to be too big but turns out it was just right to go around the mouth of the spring.
Here I am in my Superwoman pose! I had to haul the concrete and mortar down in a wheelbarrow but the stones I did bring down in my truck. Still, it was a pretty good workout. I kept the Sonotube in place to help me keep a good circle going with the block. When you are through, you just peel the Sonotube off or out of the concrete.
Here you can see the footing and the stone work. Most of the block is some old stuff that I busted up out of the BFA's driveway. I thought it was kind of cool looking because it is so old it was poured back when they used slag from steel mills as the aggregate, so you get these bright, glassy bits in the block. They are pretty much all a uniform thickness too so they lay well. I pointed the outside of the wall on the uphill side to help seal it up and put the poly against the block before backfilling too. So, we'll see. As I said, I need to go a little higher with the wall and build a little berm uphill to help divert more water.

Thank you all for your kind words recently. I am not going to give up on my house. It is just like any construction project; you always run into problems that you did not forsee but you fix them. Everything is just one thing at a time and you keep going. I think I may have not explained my work situation clearly though. I may have to go out of state but we do get to come home about twice a month. Sometimes you can come home every weekend; depends on how far away you are. Anyway, I could make a lot of money if I go and afford to build the other side of the house (much faster) when I come home for good, so it has it's advantages. And if I go with mostly the crew that I have worked with on this last job it will be a hell of a good time. We have already decided that we are going to get up a bowling team and join a league down there and I told the guys we are all going to learn to dance to the Zydeco music too! It will be an adventure for sure.

Cool, Clear Water

I do not think I can quite express my overwhelming joy and glee at what you are now seeing. That beautiful, clear water is freely flowing from my garden hose whenever I turn the knob! True, it's not flowing in the house yet, but like the monkey said when he got his tail caught in the door, it won't be long now. Mostly due to Allen's great efforts, we finally relocated the pump and tank and got everything wired and hooked up. The pump house itself is not finished but is providing enough shelter for the equipment for now.

We had to run about 220 feet of #8 wire in conduit to this new location. We are using a 1hp shallow well pump which draws 7 or 8 amps running but more when it initially starts up. I found several different recommendations for wire size on this due to length of the pull etc. but #12 seemed to be the most popular size. I did want to go one size up from that because this allows for greater energy efficiency. Just like water flows freer through a larger pipe, electricity flows easier through larger wire. I read a couple of studies on how much cheaper it is to run an appliance or whatever if you go one size bigger on the wire. On average, it was about $30-$40 a year savings, which may not seem like that much but to me, that adds up. Actually, the #8 is 2 sizes bigger but Allen insisted and we worked out a deal where he gets my leftover #12 wire (which I had procured at an earlier date for free), which will be a lot, in exchange for this wire here. The electrical box is an old leftover off a job, the rafters are 80 year old heart pine out of an old building downtown and the roof decking is plyform from way back when we poured the first foundation wall for the house. We did buy the PT 2x4's for the framing.

Here you can see the configuration of the pump and tank and how that is all hooked up. There will be a real floor in the house at some point. It did not take anywhere near the effort to prime the system this time. Of course, the water line was still holding water from our first efforts but it was much easier to get going and you can hear that it just runs better and sounds better. There is only one 90 degree turn in the pipe on the suction side.

Here you can see that, in order to keep the water lines as even and in line as possible, the equipment was located at different elevations. I was pleased to see the concrete walls came out as well as they did. I was afraid that with such tight (4") forms and no vibrator, we were going to have a bunch of honeycomb in the walls but we didn't. I bumped them really good but gently with a sledgehammer the whole time we were pouring. If you look close you can see the little PT blocks we embedded in the top of the walls for the framing to fasten to. That seemed to work well. Pulling wire that far was really a pain. We ran a strong string through the conduit as we were gluing it together but when we tried to pull all three wires through, the string broke. So, we pulled everything back out and sucked the string back through with a vacuum. We then pulled just the ground wire through (we had double length of it) and used it to pull the 2 hot wires and another length of ground wire. That worked pretty good but you still need one person at each end pushing and pulling.

So now I can water my garden just standing there instead of hauling water in buckets up from the creek. I watered everything I could reach today, even myself some. That spring water is COLD though! After about an hour of running water and making sure the pump and tank were going to work properly, I checked the spring level. It had dropped about 12-14 inches, which did cause me some concern. I have not seen it drop that much that fast. Anyway, I turned the water off and left for about 2 hours and when I came back the spring had completely recovered to it's previous level.

Dry Times

This week our county and about half the others in the state were declared federal disaster areas because of the drought here. Around this area it doesn't actually look that bad but I know it is. What is frustrating is that, like today, huge, dark clouds just filled with rain came up and boiled all around and then just sorta faded away without so much as a drop falling. The little spring doesn't seem to be doing too badly though. It is down about 2 inches. We put this 3" pipe down in the spring with these measurements marked on the outside just to keep an idea of what the water does. This pipe also serves to protect the suction pipe from a possible cave-in and keep any big frog or whatever away. There are a series of 1/2" holes drilled in the lower 4' of this pipe to allow the water to flow to the suction pipe. The suction pipe is 1 1/2" PVC with a brass footvalve about 18" above the bottom of the hole.

This is a little further down the line where I walk down to the stream, that comes from the spring, to dip water. As you can see, the path is well worn.

This is down at the deeper part; you can see my dipping can on the right. This is about as deep as it ever is though. This is a very nice area and I want to clear it just a little more and plant some native, flowering plants here and there. There are already lots of oak leaf hydrangea and ferns.

My garden is not doing too bad except where the rabbits came in and mauled it but I have been willing to haul water to it several days a week. I did pick some squash today and hopefully the tomatoes will be ripe soon. One thing that is thriving is the grasshoppers! They are everywhere and just waiting to eat everything I have. I keep the plants sprayed with Pyola or Neem oil which are both good organic insecticides. They even keep the Japanese beetles off.

On another subject, I look at my site meter pretty regular to see who is coming around and I have noticed many regulars but most never leave comments. Now, I love to hear from those of you who do (Pablo, FC, karl) but I would like to hear from you other people! I see some from New York, California (which always surprises me) Illinois, South Carolina etc. I know I am not perceptive enough to be explaining everything well about the house we are building. Do ya'll want to know something about things that I have not shown? Have I not explained something well? Do you wonder why in the hell I do the things I do? Speak to me!! Any other female construction workers out there? And another thing: I got people from Pella Corp. to visit my site just by mentioning the name because it is found by search engines, so I wonder, could I get say, Martha Stewart to visit my site just by mentioning her name a bunch of times? Hhmm. We'll see.