Pipeline – the N2 2011.04.25

Saturday, 23 April 2011

Teamwork today, Neil, Rob, Jenny and us. We hoped to give it a good go today and we did, even though some of us didn’t see it that way. It is just such a lot of work that sometimes it is discouraging to see how little one can achieve in a day.

Rob carried on burying the pipe, this time on the slope going up from the suspended part towards the River Walk, Neil did the joints in the Nursery, Jenny bought cake as summoned and we dug some more to try and follow the old pipe under the road and gave up in the end and decided to lay new pipe from thereon.

We discovered that where the smaller pipe inside the old pipe at the beginning was 32mm but at the end was only one inch so somewhere in the middle there had to be a join. It took us some time to find it using the time honoured principle of binary search and then replaced the one inch with new 32mm pipe. We wanted to do the same further on but, even though at both sides the inner pipe was one inch it wouldn’t budge, indicating there must be another join somewhere. This would also be time consuming and more suitable for a more patient approach so Ellie and I will do that on one of our weekly outings, instead we wanted to get a pipe underneath the N2.

The crew is dragging a 100m pipe length to the fence alongside the N2.

I tried to push the pipe through the culvert underneath the road but it got stuck so there was no alternative but to crawl the entire 50m through the narrow pipe, not a job for a claustrophobic person. This is what I looked like after:

A bit muddy, fortunately I had brought clean clothes.

After all this we wanted to see water flowing so I drove around to open the stopcock while the others connected as much pipe as they could, pity we didn’t have enough to get to the N2 but alas, no water coming out. Jenny and Neil had to leave so it was up to Rob and us to find the problem.

Walking back along the pipe (again) Rob showed us where a porcupine had gnawed on the pipe so it is quite clear we need to cover the pipe asap and we found that the water reached only halfway up the slope. I guessed it could be an airlock and by opening a join on the opposite side released the air and the water started flowing. Looks like we need an air release valve somewhere.

We also found that one of the joins on Gibson’s property was leaking badly, by trying to fix it we got totally soaked and had to close our valve first, it is impossible to work against the water pressure.

Plenty to do next time.