Working On the Pipeline Spring and the Pot Grower’s Spring

Thursday June 20, 2024 Guerneville CA.

Airing tires

I checked the van’s tires to make sure they were up to the right air pressure, something I always do before a trip. The tires were all up to the right pressure.

Neighbor’s diesel problem

I did some research on my neighbor’s diesel problem of the machine only running at full bore last night.

It seems like the problem is inside the throttle control house on the injector pump. Seems there are some levers and springs in there that might be jammed.

With all the water he had in the fuel, the housing must of been full of water for over a week. Usually the chamber is full of diesel which keeps these levers lubed so I think one of them is stuck in full bore, so the solution would be to take the cover off and try to free whatever up in there that is causing the problem.

I went over this morning to tell them what I thought. They have an old timer local mechanic coming by tomorrow which is just what they need so I don’t have to deal with it.

Pipeline work

I knew I had a bad fitting on the pipeline. I found something better so rode the bike up to the spring where that was.

I walked out the pipeline to replace the bad fitting.

The line had pulled apart as I thought it might have. Can’t collect mush water that way.

I didn’t have the piece of pipe I normally use the other day and had to use the barb. It fit loose in the pipe and didn’t seal which I knew about. I don’t like these type of fittings even though they are made to do this. It needs clamps but then they corrode and make it hard to take the pipe apart if you want to check something out. The metal type barbs are even worse as they are very hard to take apart if need be.

Better coupler

In a three quarter inch black plastic pipe, a half inch pvc or this gray pipe in half inch fit into the plastic pipe just about perfect with no clamps and it can be taking apart without much trouble. I installed the new coupler and headed back to the bike for a ride.

This big tree wasn’t there yesterday. At least I could get around it.

Of course I made it to the top for a break. Cloudy with smoke in the background.

Pot Grower’s Spring

Eventually, I made it to this spring I’ll call Pot Growers spring. I’d run into a bunch of yellow jackets last time when I tried to dig this one up, so I needed to go up and locate the nest so I could deal with it later.,,,,,,,,,,,,,But.

I walked up the ravine carefully looking for the nest hole in the ground which can be found by the bees coming and going from it, but I couldn’t spot it.

Bee nest

When I looked down in front of me right where I was digging last time I spotted this hole which some paper nest stuff there. It appears a coon or skunk dug it up and ate it all up, so no bees today or maybe a fox of bobcat.

So I continued to dig in that spot to find the water pipe where I thought the end of it might be where the water entered it, but I didn’t find the end, but I did find the pipe. I would have to do too much digging to follow the pipe up the ravine, so decided not to dig that up any more.

Better spot

On the way up the ravine I’d spotted a better place down below this spot which would be a much better place to tap it and I worked on checking that out a bit. I think I found a good spot that I will dig out later which has much more water than the higher spot, maybe two or three gallons a minute which is good for the type of springs in this area.

When I got back to the bottom I remembered I’d put a cup under the pipe that was just barely running water, mostly just a drip and the cup was full of a good drink of water.