Working On Tapping the Redwood Spring and the Van’s Tire Is Going Flat

Friday July 14, 2023 Guerneville CA.

Spring work in the forest

Today, I’m going to work on tapping the spring, so I rode the bike up to the spring to get to work. I also want to make video clips of the process for YouTube. It goes like this. I work on the spring for a bit, then take a break and think about what to say on the video clip, then shot it and take another break and do some more work and do it again and again.

 

Spring hole

This is the spot the spring is popping out of the ground from a hole on the right side.

 

Outlet pipe

I’ve dug things out a bit and am trying the outlet pipe for fit.

 

The water is coming down from the top so I will build up this filter outlet with clay soil to collect the spring water. I’ll also make a sort of sink dam to contain the water and get it into the filter.

 

Spring outlet

This is what it looks like. The stainless kitchen strainer will go over that green thing eventually and rock gets put over that. It’s collecting water now. I will put an inch or so layer of blue clay all around the green thing to direct the spring water to the green outlet thing, before putting the stainless steel screen on the green thing, but not today.

 

Gallon a minute

This is what it looks like now. I measured the flow and it took 53 seconds to fill the one gallon can so there is just a bit over a gallon a minute coming out of this spring.

 

Newt

I spotted this little critter in the gravels. It’s about three inches long and it’s a newt. I put it in a place it would be safe.

 

I’m sitting there taking a break and looking down over the spring.

 

Keeping it small

You can just barely see the green strainer in the hole. Note the collection hole is very small, so there is less work to do this and it’s small foot print doesn’t get contaminated as easy as a larger tap, which is a good thing. Everything is much easier to do with a small tap like this and if it needs to be worked on later, it’s easy to take apart and  clean out, unlike a big system. This is almost ready for the kitchen screen and some rocks over that. It won’t take many rocks to fill this hole up. The rocks help hold up the dirt and keep critters out of the tapping area.

 

A small  hole like this is the way I like to tap them as it makes everything much easier to do and makes for a better spring tap in lots of ways.

That’s all I had time to do on that today. I just  have a little more work to finish this spring off.

Trimming brush

I headed for home down this road and stopped to trim that brush off the road as it can hit me in the face while riding the bike. I stopped at a couple other spots and did the same.

 

Another spring

On the way home I was riding by this spring that is in this gulley, with the water just running out. I thought I should put a pipe in so I can get a drink here too, so I did. This spring is already tapped and just needs a black pipe to bring the water out to where it can be used.

 

I put this piece of pipe in and made a pool for the water for birds and animals to drink. The noise of the water splashing really attracts things to the water. I’ve been seeing bigger birds fly off from the recent spring taps as I ride around the hills, so I know things are working for the wild life.

 

Nap time

Back home, it was nap time for a good while to rest up.

Van’s tire is flat

I noticed the van’s tire was going flat the other day from the last trip I took. I set it up to find the hole with soapy water.

 

The leak

The hole turned out to be on the sidewall, from I know not what. This will take a trip to the tires guys to get it fixed. You can see the small bubbles from the air leak under the black marker.

 

Nice day.