Lately, the oasis has gotten a couple of nice rains, which means pumping water if everything doesn't fill up from a huge monsoon. I hadn't known that the rain filled the [upper] dirt tank until two days after the fact. By the time I got there, half the water was lost.
I finally managed to get the remainder pumped out into the stucco tank, adding 10" to it. Thereafter, I went back to Alpine to recuperate.
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Photo by Ricky Green |
That night it rained again, and filled it again, so yesterday I went right back down, still unrecovered from the previous day. Terlingua Ranch resident, Ricky Green, volunteered to help me with the pumps. That was a godsend for me.
We eventually got the pump going. The broken tank had also harvested a lot of water in that second rain, so we set up an electric pump in it.
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Photo by Ricky Green |
It no longer holds water so I planned to pump it into the stucco tank. It contained enough to top off the stucco tank. After Ricky left, the gas pump quit running and the electricity went out. In hindsight, I should've used a gas pump in the broken tank. I had thought I could make the pumping easier by using the lighter electric pump. Didn't expect a power outage.
This morning, I tackled the situation by myself. I changed the oil in the gas pump, leveled it better, and finally got it going. Since I had anticipated topping off the stucco tank with the broken tank water, I continued pumping the [upper] dirt tank water into the lower dirt tank, which holds better. Good plan.... if it had worked. Without help, I couldn't change the setup. It was locked in.
Currently, the stucco tank lacks about 18" of being full. I plan to go top it off in a few days from the lower dirt tank, unless a monsoon fills everything. The pump at the lower dirt tank is harder to get going. Ricky said he'd come help if I need him to.
My back is hurting real bad, but I think it'll feel somewhat better in the morning. It's never pain-free. Those days are long gone.