Sunday November 2, 2016 Guerneville CA.
Jelling plans
Still trying to jell my Jell-O plans. I’m not sure there is a generator up at the Boonville cabin right now, so I finally decided to head on over to Santa Rosa to get the stuff we need to repair the septic system up there.
Headed for the hardware store
I had a plan now. I used to work in a restaurant in my teens and I know that people go home early on a Sunday, so I hopped chairs around the yard until three PM and then got in the van and headed for Santa Rosa, making sure I had my tie down ropes. I took the back roads too as I usually do and scooted right over there to Friedman’s hardware and drove into their yard looking for used plastic barrels as we needed one. 
I looked up after parking the van and there they were. I checked them out to be sure the one I got was the best and had no holes. I think they had some kind of pickles in them in their earlier life.
Some ABS pipe too
I threw the barrel inside the back of the van and drove over to the ABS pipe area and loaded a couple pieces of pipe on the top of the van tying it down good, using both rope and bungees.
Hunting for parts
From there I drove over to the contractor’s parking and went into the store to get the ABS parts we needed. I picked up some stainless steel bolts and nuts too. I had to walk back and forth about twenty times to find all the stuff we needed. That was partly because I had figured about ninety five percent of what we needed, so I needed to figure out the other five percent, which was mostly what parts we needed to get the pipes through the barrel without leaking. I found some plastic toilet flanges for that. One on the outside and one on the inside with the barrel sandwiched between the two flanges. Four stainless steel bolts on each one should do it with a little silicone between them too.
I paid getting my Vets discount of ten percent which most of the big hardware stores give these days and had a nice talk with the check out lady too. Things were slow as I had predicted as it was just before five PM now.
Some Chinese noodles would be good
I headed towards home stopping at a Chinese grocery store to pick up some rice noodles and then went on home as I had some work to do before it got dark.
I need to get the barrel plumbed up
I got the tools out and cut a hole in the removable top of the barrel which is on the ground. I found I had the right size hole saw for that so that went nice and made a nice hole. Then I needed to do the one on the side. The only problem with that is it needed to be put right were there were some ribs on the barrel to work properly. This is for the leach field water. I got out my torch and heated the barrel plastic while I tightened up the sandwiched flanges until the barrel was pretty much flattened out and also I forced the flange to point down just a little so things would drain properly.
This is a side view of the barrel. The idea is for poo water to come into the center of the top and the leach water to go out the side. I will put an elbow in the inside pointing down to let the leach water out and not the poo.
Trying to beat the redwood trees
We are doing it this way as we can’t stop the redwood tree roots from getting into the system and plugging it all up. It does it fairly fast. This will be an above ground system so we are able to service it if we have too. This is just for the camp outhouse that has a flush toilet, but has low usage in general so the small tank should work and maybe we can beat the redwood trees.
Headed back to Boonville
My plan is to head back up to Boonville tomorrow and install this system. I’ll be up there a few days with no internet, so I’ll post when I get back.
That was my day.
