Pipeline – it works! 2011.03.31

Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Quite a day of lots of different things, Rob helped us today and at first it was a bit of adjustment for him to fit into the well oiled team. Ellie and I are of course so used to working together that we don’t need to say what needs to be done, we just know.

We started at the old nursery and first we rolled out another coil of pipe and took it down our path and connected it to the 40mm pipe, pleasantly surprised it took us to above the Riverwalk path. Ellie then walked with Rob along the pipe to Gibson’s gulch to show him how we had crossed the river while I drove around to check why we did not have water the last time and I discovered that the main valve had been turned off, the question remained, why?

I turned it back on and joined the other two who had been wondering what took me so long and turned our attention to reaming the metal pipes and put them in position.

Rob shoving the home made reamer up the pipe to remove the rust and mud whilst water flows in the other side. I’m very proud that my invention works so well.

We then carried the pipe sections across the gully and put them in position.

The crossing of Gibson’s Gulch, we secured the pipe with rocks, needs a few more though.

We then fed the mdpe pipe through all the way past the fence and connected it to the section going down. As it was getting close to lunchtime we decided to connect the other side to the running water temporarily to see if the water would make it to the other side so while Rob kindly dragged the left over pipe all the way back along the route to the old nursery we drove around again with baited breath and we were delighted to find the water running strongly along the Riverwalk path. Success at last!

After lunch with Jenny we returned to Gibson’s gulch to cut and ream a few more lengths of metal pipes while Rob stayed behind to help Jenny in the nursery, after all, the nursery makes the money which allows us to play with pipes, and then switched off our stopcock.

Ellie then walked across the field and the railway line towards the main valve to check for wet patches while I drove around again to the main valve and as I arrived there happened to stand some locals there. I asked them if they had spotted some leaks and one of them showed me a big puddle along the fence. This of course means more work for us.

We closed the valve, back to the old nursery and fixed a piece of pipe across the Riverwalk path and managed to get the pipe as far as the firebreak behind the nursery.

Pity the pieces of pipe we had left were too short to make it all the way into the nursery, perhaps just as well as this bit of pipe seems to be rather clogged with soil and besides, some sundowner coffee in the middle of the Reserve was a much better option.