The story of the leaking pipe continues.
After our heroic efforts to seal the leak in the cement pipe in the mud last time we went back last Wednesday to reconnect the join in the pipe. What an impossible job that turned out to be as we could not manage to bring the two ends of the pipe close enough together for the join to fit properly without some leakage. So we decided to return to the mud patch and were pleased to see that the soil had dried up considerably. Rob turned the water back on and all seemed reasonable though he heard a gurgling sound by the railway line and some seepage by our concrete. We closed the hole and the gully nonetheless. It took quite a while for the water to reach the arboretum but when it did we were pleased to find that the original pressure was back. So we declared it a success with some work still to be done.
We bought some plumbing parts during the week and were all ready to finish the job yesterday. Out of courtesy we phoned Thomas so he was aware what we were doing and he told us in no uncertain terms that we were not allowed on the property. This was a big problem because there was no water at all in the nursery so the pipe must have come apart. Off we went to the manhole to turn the stopcock off so we wouldn’t waste water just running out and took the opportunity to check the pipe up to the boundary of the Lottering property. More bad news as both by the railway line and our ‘fixed’ joint there is considerable seepage.
We are now at a loss what to do as without this water supply we cannot keep the nursery going and the pond with the fish will dry up.
For the rest of the day we kept ourselves busy in the nursery and did some weeding in the traffic circle.