Tuesday May 11, 2021 Guerneville CA.
Well unplugging work
I watched some YouTube videos to get some ideas on how to remove the sediment at the bottom of the old well as I think it might be blocking the inlet holes a bit.
So back to work on the old well.
Testing the well
I undid the union on the well output and gave it one more test. It rain like this for two minutes until it lowered the water in the well casing and stopped.
Pulling the pump
That meant I needed to pull the new pump out with about 50 feet of pipe so I got the ladder out and located my brother Tom to help guide the pipe out without kinking the plastic pipe.
Suction contraption
I had this old jet pump laying around which works by putting some water in the small pipe which causes a lot of water to go up the big pipe. I wanted to use this contraption to suck out the sediment at the bottom of the well. I spent a good deal of time hunting up the pipe parts to attach the water hose and I set it up for air too. It needed a long pipe attached to get the flow to the surface.
Then I rounded up Tom again to help me put the unit in the well without kinking the black plastic pipe.
Sucking sediment
We turned on the water and it shot out a good volume of water and mud until the loose stuff was used up in the bottom of the well and it got to the hard packed stuff and then didn’t work too good as the packed mud was too packed to pick up.
I knew I needed to pull the contraption up again and put some kind of sharp thing on the end to dig into the packed mud.
Try air
But first I thought I might as well try to inject air instead of water to see how that would work. I got out the air compressor. That worked but still wouldn’t pick up the packed mud
Making sharp spikes
So I went in the garage and made a couple sharp metal spikes and found some clamps to clamp them on the end but not today. I’ll need to round up Tom again to pull the pipe out to attach the spikes, maybe tomorrow.
Sampling berries
The next thing I did was check out my berries to see what there was to eat.
My first raspberries sure disappeared fast, but there will be lots more real soon.
I don’t like to share with the critters
And I consumed all the ripe strawberries and noticed the rodents have been eating some of them, likely mice and rats so I put something out for them.
My blueberries are still green and not showing much sighs of ripening yet.
Checking water tank level
Late in the day I rode the dirt bike up to the water tanks to check the water level. The water level is slowly recovering about a foot each day so now the tanks are half full, which sounds better than half empty.
Guerneville overlook
As long as I was on the dirt bike I rode up to the Guerneville overlook with this view of the little town of Guerneville nestled in the forest.
I went through this area on the way back to the house.
Nice day.