Day: July 18, 2023

Tues. July 18, 2023 – still plugging away, but progress is happening…

Hot and humid. Duh. Extra hot in fact. Dunno what the high in the sun was, but in full shade we cracked 100F. Humidity was down though which helped, and we had a fairly steady breeze.

I spent the day working on sprinklers. I got the manifold working with 6 zones and one ‘always on’ spigot. I hooked up a sprinkler head to an adapter and a garden hose and ran that most of the afternoon. The goal was to get a feel for pressure, capacity, and usage by the big rotating heads, while at the same time, actually watering some of the yard.

Then I started working on the existing ‘trunk line’ to the front yard. I expected some issues, as I could see a break, I needed to get into it somehow, and it ran near where we did a bunch of trenching for the septic- with a Ditch Witch.

I was able to build a mess of adapters to get the water into the pipe. Running water through it got me water gushing up from the ground… So I spliced that. Water gushing up 10 ft further up the hill… can’t find the pipe to splice. So work back from the next spigot. Find a break in the first foot of digging. Yup, pretty sure we ripped out almost 20 ft with the Ditch Witch.

Since I could see the pink lines for the septic drip field in one of the holes, I didn’t want to go digging around. I set up one of the zones with a hose and a pressure wand and spent an hour ‘trenching’ with the wand. MUCH easier than digging with shovels in 100F sun. Yeah, I’ll stand there with a hose and wand for an hour if that’s what it takes. Anyway, cut a trench about 6 inches deep and pretty much exactly as wide as the pipe, for 20 feet. Cut some roots out with pruning shears. DIDN’T find any more septic parts.

Today I’ll think about running into town for some plumbing parts and to see if they have the 1″ poly irrigation line and fittings. If not, I’ll bring it up with me next time. Which will be soon, as I’ve won some stuff to do a temporary deck in back. I’d like to get that in before it rains and turns the red clay dirt and dust into muck. It’ll involve another trailer rental and speed run. Joy. Pickup in San Antonio, drop off a couple hours north of Houston. I don’t think I’ll be doing that in one day but I will be doing it before the end of the week.

It’s a great life if you don’t weaken…

So DON’T WEAKEN.

And stack stuff. Plumbing parts. Electrical repair stuff. Tools. And know how, or reference materials*.

nick

*adding a Hoyle’s book of card game rules to the next trip up. A copy of the Home Handyman might be good too.

Read the comments: 48 Comments
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- // end of file archive.php // -------------------------------------------------------------------------------