Oh Well

Sand!

If only I were referring to the beach.  Despite not living in the desert or at the beach, our house gets its fair share of sand on the floor everyday from what falls off of Lulu Belle after even a brief run outside.  She invariably gets wet - she likes to drink while IN the ponds - and then lays down in the dirt next to the carport (the grass hasn't grown in yet) to sun herself before asking to come inside.  However, that's not our biggest problem with sand.

The well at Terrell's cabin had always been known to pull sand from time to time.  It was a shallow well, unlike the well here at our house which is about 450 feet deep.  This was something we were aware of from other relatives who had used the well.  We figured it would be fine as he lived by himself and didn't use as much water.  On the advice of a local well driller, we had a filter installed in the pump house.  It was installed in mid-November when the plumber was putting the final fixtures in our house.  We figured we'd have to check it and clean it about once every 6 months or so.  By February it was filled to the brim and sand was passing through into the cabin.  Time for Plan B.  Looks like we're going to need a new well for the cabin.

Our well at the main house.  Pretty typical for this area.
Large tank, exposed to the weather.

I called the well driller and he told me that while he'd gladly take my money to put in a new well ($5000 - $6000), he had a cheaper solution for me (I like that guy!).  He recommended a local irrigation expert to tap off the well at my own house and run a pipe about 1000' to Terrell's cabin.  Interesting...and a couple thousand dollars cheaper.  He knew my well configuration as he's the one that put it in about 10-11 years ago.  He said it had a powerful enough pump motor (1.5 HP) to handle up to 6 houses if I wanted to put that many on it.  Good to know, but I only need one more.

I stopped by the irrigation man's office and put my name on the list.  He (Brian) returned my call after about 2 weeks (spring is irrigation season!) and said he could get started in about 4 weeks.  Today is 4 weeks from then.  The trenching has begun!

I told him that seeing his crooked line down the field made me feel better about the
edge of the garden that I plowed last spring.  It's not easy to do without a line or string.

We're taking advantage of the situation to add some outdoor spigots for the garden.  As the water line comes off of our well, it's running across the road and splitting off to a corner of our barn for one spigot.  Brian told me that he had the workings for a second spigot and he'd put it in (no extra charge) anywhere I wanted.  So we're going to have it pop up in the middle of the pasture so we can have water on both ends of our vegetable garden.  The orientation and the location of the garden will have to change so we're not plowing/tilling over top of the water pipe, though it is about 18 or so inches deep.

View from our well.

Spigot at the corner of the barn.

Spigot in the middle of the pasture, looking back toward the barn.
The spigot will be attached to a post (we had) laying next to the trench

It's nice to know that at the end of the day Terrell will have clean water.  If he doesn't, we're all in the same boat.  On top of that, we can irrigate our garden from both sides, which will really come in handy when we start to get our plants and seeds established.

Despite a rain shower that last over two hours and stopped work, they managed to do all of the trenching, dig out out around both well connections, connect all of the piping, cover up and tamp down the trench, smooth out the dirt/grass and get everything finished by the end of the day. A very nice and hard working group of guys.  I'll certainly keep them in mind if I ever need more work like this done.  They know what they're doing.  This is the finished product: