Hard day of shoveling trenches, but all the major shoveling is finally done!
The first water pipe is completely run up to one of the 55-gal barrels, and I'll be buying a couple more pieces of pipe to finish the last water line tomorrow. I basically have a shelf along the back fence about 30" wide, which then drops straight down into the 3' hole. I'll be glad when the pond is full of water and applying pressure against that wall, because it's raining outside again tonight, and I'd really hate to see the whole thing collapse.
Once I finished gluing the first pipe, it was obvious it wanted to lay a little different through the bends than what I expected. I don't want to stress the glue joints by forcing the pipe into position, so I'll just adjust the walls of the trench a little and let the pipe lay where it wants. This length of pipe had to go under another sprinkler line, plus my cable TV line, but there's plenty of room for everything, and I'm putting these pipes a full 12" down, which should help avoid freezing.
My poor yard... The grass is trying to green up, and I keep trampling it down, and creating more piles of dirt everywhere. It's going to take some serious work to get everything cleaned up again. Here's a shot showing the small pond, river, and the big pond in the background. My quasi-bog area is directly behind the barrel, where the big pond flows into the river.
And finally - after I glued the first pipe together, I wanted to test the joints, so I used the gutter-drain pipe I originally tested, plus some other pieces, and routed the line all the way back to the river. The water is being pumped through nearly 60 feet of pipe for this test, and there doesn't seem to be any problem at all with the flow.
Well, that's it for today. With all the major digging done now, the next couple day's work will seem like a vacation!
