Pipeline – track and trace 2011.05.15

Saturday, 14 May 2011

Today we wanted to map the whole line with the gps and combine that with connecting the missing bits, turn on the valve and check for leaks.

We were hoping that the Van Stadens staff had at least made a start with the furrow they promised to dig for us and had laid out last week with tape but no such luck.

We connected a short piece of pipe near the fence to bring the water at least inside the reserve, unfortunately it was too short so we just laid it inside the ditch. Then we walked as close to the line as possible and put in a waypoint for each and every join and feature, twenty five joins along the whole line. On the way we also put in a new piece where the porcupine holes were and connected the short, missing piece by the Gibson stopcock. Said hello to the local residents, Ellie pacified the dogs, turned the stopcock twenty turns and started walking back.

Almost immediately bad news as we heard a sucking noise near where Neil had patched the pipe previously, it looks like we’ll have to bite the bullet and take our first join even closer to the manhole. We decided though to keep the water running, carry out our inspection and found no leaks along the entire 2.6km stretch except by the culvert where we still have to tighten the join, got down to the road and what a pleasant surprise!

I was a bit disappointed with the pressure but on reflection it could be that the combination two leaks and only opening the valve halfway may have something to do with that. In any case, plenty supply for our purposes.

After coffee at the old nursery we drove around to switch the water off again and then continued our quest to finish things by filling in all the holes we had previously dug in the servitude to trace the old pipe. Got a bit carried away and at 14:30 realised that the reason we were running out of energy might be because we had forgotten about lunch!

After lunch we did some more filling in and collected more rocks to stabilize the pipe by Gibson’s gully.

Finally, on the way home, popped past Deon to report on progress and he was very impressed with the results so far.

All in all, a good day at the office.