Funny thing is, the girl said the vehicle had been broken into three times already this year. Something's wrong when thieves have no trouble unlocking vehicles, but we can't. So here my dear neighbor Bruce is taping up the broken window. The poor girl didn't even stay to see the Lucifer Hummingbirds. Sad. (She had a spare key in her purse but that was locked inside too. We used long wires to extract both keys but they came off the wire when trying to get them through the crack in the door frame.) At first she said please don't scratch the window, but after five hours she said, please break the window.
While I had Bruce here, I got him to go into the upper dirt tank and free the intake from the mud. So I'm now pumping the water into the lower dirt tank where it holds better. I'm forever grateful to Bruce for doing that nasty job to save that water. Seeing how firmly it was buried in mud, I could never have freed it myself. (Another rain storm raised the level back up to brimful again, so the water was almost over my head.) I'm going to have to come up with a way of preventing that from happening again.
Found this well-camouflaged Solitary Sandpiper enjoying the lower dirt tank.
Can's resist showing off my water. First is my precious dragonfly pond. I should have enough water to make sure it goes all summer without drying up. It'll yield awesome odes any day now. Mosquitoes have arrived but not so bad yet.
Here's the biggest tank that never leaks. I hate how red the water gets since I cleaned out the pondweed. Big mistake!
When I get the water all pumped I have to go to town. Hope I get there before midnight. What a day!
UPDATE: Nothing went as planned today. I pumped water from 1 PM until around 7 PM when I went to gas up the pump (every hour or so). It was running hot and dry. No water was going through it to cool it. You're not supposed to run them at all without water. I just couldn't deal with any more today. I turned it off and headed to town. Took me 2½ hours because I had some potted plants in the back that I didn't want to damage. Ruined them anyway, even at 35 mph. They're Mexican Petunias (Ruellia) and will recover. Need too much water. Trying to go more xeric at the oasis.
I hope the pump isn't ruined. It's a brand new one and the first time it was used. Either the intake got into mud again which seems highly unlikely, or it floated to the top and lost its prime. Since I'll only have a couple feet of water left in the tank when I get back down there, it's an easy fix. Just hope the pump is OK.
When Bruce pulled the intake out of the mud he also removed the weight on the intake. It needs a weight so it won't float, but I figured he wouldn't get enough of the hose above the mud to where it could float, at least not until the water was much lower in the tank. Then I forgot all about that possibility and went on with my normal routine. Bruce couldn't have known. He was working blindly under five feet of water on something he'd never seen before, or knew anything about. It's 100% on me.
3 comments:
Argh on the pump. I used to live in a house that had pond water for the supply. I say "pond" but in Texas you know what I mean. So I know what you are talking about. I used to float an empty bleach bottle on the end of the intake. Sheesh. I am so glad I'm not having to deal with that. Hang in there.
PS: my intake had a heavy wire spiral thing on the end of it so it NEVER floated.
I hear you. Gonna try to see this doesn't happen again. Very bad if my new pump is ruined. My intake has a plastic hood and it floats but I have it weighed down. Bruce had no choice but to take the weight off to get it out of the mud. He probably tried to free the line too, not realizing what could happen. I would've known had I been the one doing the work, but no way could I have done what he did in 5' of water. I figured enough of the intake hose would be buried in mud that it couldn't float. Will have to assess the situation when I get back down there. Trying to be optimistic here. In the future, I'll put a weight on the bottom, tied to a chain so it can float up 6" or so. I have one like that I use with my 2" pumps. That storm was the worst in 20 years. It took a lot of silt washing in to cover that intake.
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