Saturday September 28, 2013 Jenner, CA.
Redoing the new water spring first thing
I thought I’d go down to Jenner this evening and kayak, which meant I had time to work on digging out the new spring I had worked on a couple weeks ago. Now I had time to do it right as we have tanks full of water, so I can shut this one down to work on it. I put it in temporary at that time as we were out of water and I just needed to get some water in the tanks. And the more I thought about it, ………………it being a good spring and all, I thought I better take it apart and do it right.
First I took all the rocks and plastic off that I had done before, then I cut a ditch in the clay to bring a little side spring to this main one.
Below, I have a two inch PVC pipe in the ground with an elbow and a down spout filter in at this point. Most of the water is coming from a one inch hole just in back of the green filter. Interesting enough, I drilled that one inch hole in the ground about twenty years ago and it was a dry hole then, but now it has water. Sometimes things pay off. :O)
Note that there is no puddle of water around the green filter, on purpose. The best is when water just comes in and runs down into the two inch PVC pipe. Water puddles are just places for bugs and critters and other bad stuff to live, so I avoid puddles and that way all the water that comes into the system goes down the pipe, every drop.
I then put a stainless steel screen, I formed, over the green filter to keep all the little stuff out of the pipe. The screen is small enough to keep roots out of the pipe also. They try to grow down into the pipe to get water for the trees and tend to plug things up in time. So far tree roots haven’t grown though any of these screens I’ve been using. I try to push the bottom of it down into some blue clay I put in around the exit pipe to seal it.
The next step is to put some rocks around the screen to make cracks that the water can flow down and into the exit pipe. The rocks help keep the channel open once I bury it all. The idea is to place the rocks so there are cracks that will hopefully remain open and let the water though, even after I bury it all. Lot’s more rocks followed.
Once I had all the rocks in, I put some plastic bags over the rocks to keep the dirt and debree out and also critters too. Plastic bags over the rock channels I made, just need a couple more bags on the left and then it’s ready to cover up with dirt and leaves and stuff to seal it.
Once I cover it all up with dirt and leaves it disappears and hopefully is sealed against bad stuff getting in there.
Here is the two inch PVC pipe that comes from the spring tap and is pouring out fresh free water. I don’t glue the end piece of the pipe as to allow a place to clean it out, if that needs to be done. Reducing it from two inches to half an inch makes this a possible place for it to get plugged up, although with the filters I put on there, it won’t likely happen.
I decided to leave this spring running free and not going into the water tanks as the more it runs, the cleaner it gets. I hope to leave it running over the winter to really wash it out, if we don’t need the water. If we do, it’s’ clean enough to drink, just the same.
Will I go to Jenner for an evening kayak or not?
I was home around five PM and was planning to go to Jenner for an evening kayak, but I was beat. I had a shower and something to eat and a big cup of coffee and was debating whether to go or not or just stay home? OK, I’ll go and left the house at six PM for Jenner.
Yes, the Russian River’s mouth is closed
I drove on past the town of Jenner to the overlook area above the river’s mouth. I wanted to view the river’s mouth as I could see from driving along the river that it was still closed.
This picture is of the closed Russian River mouth, looking out over the river and out over the Pacific ocean.
A little closer view of the closed river’s mouth. Lots of seagulls down there on the beach.
The sun had about forty five minutes to set in this picture of the Pacific ocean.
Put the boat in the water
I went on back to Jenner and put my boat in the water and headed on down towards the river’s mouth. The wind was up so I had to paddle a lot to get there.
Here I am right in front of the closed river mouth. Just a little sand closing it, but it’s enough. Not sure the lower river dams being taken out and adding to the estuary water is going to open this up? They’ve only caused the estuary to rise just a little over six inches since yesterday.
Down went the sun
The sun went on down as I headed on back. The wind was up around twenty miles an hour or so, and the waves were up a little too, which meant I had to watch out for my camera getting wet.
The below photo is just after the sun set on my way back, though the waves. I didn’t have to paddle much on the way back in.
One last photo and it got too dark to take anymore and besides I had to deal with the wind scooting me back to the take out area. 
Just before I got back to the take out area, the wind died down quite a bit and it started to get real nice, but I headed on home at about 7:45 PM, just before it got real dark out.
I was hoping that the river’s mouth would have opened to let the salt water in. The tides are coming up for a high tide just before dark which would bring the lumens in and I was planning to go out in the river to check them out, but if the mouth doesn’t open, that won’t happen.
Accomplished a lot on the spring tap and had a nice day too.