So in the last post I was so excited that everything was working! Everything in the work shed that is. Shortly after writing that post we encountered a major plumbing issue that was NOT working. The main water line running to the top 100 acres of the property crossed a gully about six feet in the air. The set up is PVC running through big steel pipes that were buried in the bank on either side of the gully. The problem is that the bank had eroded on one side and instead of steel supporting PVC, the PVC was supporting the steel! The whole set up was on the verge of collapse which would have drained the nine thousand gallons of water we have stored and the main ranch house would be without water.
Solution time!
We found a steel pipe on in the pile of reclaimed metal pile that was long enough to slip over the exposed PVC and wide enough to slip over existing steel pipe. What seemed like an easy one day project of cutting steel pipe, cutting PVC and putting everything back together turned into three days with a 5 hour round trip to Home Depot in the middle because we did not have enough replacement PVC parts to do the job. Oh boy. At least that band saw in the work shed we found a couple days before worked! We were able to cut the steel. We used a tractor to support the pipe while we worked on it. After two failed attempts that illuminated other problems with the initial set up, we finally succeeded at securing the water line. Whew.
