My worsening situation

I have a leaky tank that needs the water removed asap. My two portable 2-inch pumps won't work so my husband took them to town to get fixed. The guy that fixes them is out of town until next week. So my husband said he'd order me a new electric pump. That will take time to get here. Meanwhile I'm losing about 500 gallons per hour. To put it in perspective, that's a week's supply in winter, or a 3 day supply in summer that I'm losing every hour. In hot weather evaporation can take up to an inch per day so I need to have way more in the tank than I'll actually need.

As I write this, I've got a 1-inch electric pump running  that, between it and leakage, is lowering the water level  in the tank about half an inch per hour. With 6 foot of water still left in the tank to remove, that will take 6 days. So I've got to get a bigger pump asap, or get the ones I have fixed. It seems everything hits at once. I thought I had a tank that didn't leak and 2 working pumps. I finally prevailed upon my son to come down here tomorrow to help me hook up one of the 3" pumps that are permanently installed at the dirt tanks to empty them rapidly. Those pumps are too heavy for me to move, and it'll be a pain to uninstall one of them and cobble up fittings to make it do what we need it to do, but I think it's the best option right now. I tried to get my husband to do that when he came to pick up the non-working pumps, but he wouldn't. He had things he needed to do in Alpine.

The dirt tank is holding water better than the stucco tank is right now so once I get the water there it's better off up to a point. The fuller the dirt tank is, the faster it loses water too. There's way more surface area as it backs up the arroyo and there's more water pressure forcing it out as it gets fuller. So it's just an emergency option until I locate and patch the leak.

Lots of Wilson's Warblers at the oasis today. The oasis is gorgeous right now too.

This male was foraging for insects in an Alligator Juniper tree.

Very depressing

It seemed to take longer than usual to fill the stucco tank so I decided to monitor the level to see if it leaks. It must have sprung a big leak. It's going down fast. I'm estimating about 500-1000 gallons an hour, or half an inch an hour. About the equivalent of two garden hoses going full blast all the time. Seems to be increasing too. So discouraging when I finally get the water I need, slave away for two days to get it pumped and then watch it go down the drain, literally.

This happened once before years ago and we pumped the water out into the dirt tank, repaired the leak and put the water back in. But I had help then. Don't now. And no time. For the next three days I'm committed to help band hummers and the following day is my dental checkup in Odessa. I guess Thursday I can come with lots of gas and spark plugs and salvage what I can. Just moving one of the gas pumps into place is a physical killer for me, for starters. Then there's the priming, gassing the pumps by lifting a heavy gas can, dealing with heavy hoses, and on and on. Somehow, I have to get through this. I'll still have the big tank, which is more than I had last year. Hauling water seems to me a worst form of torture. I couldn't endure it again. Took a lot out of me.

The stucco tank was never constructed properly on the low end (far side on above photo). The other sides were all dug out of hard caliche, then stuccoed, by me, by hand. But the far end was an arroyo my late husband blocked up with fill dirt, which I also stuccoed. As far as I know that's the only place that it's ever leaked. It's always leaked at least half an inch a day at best, in spite of my obsessive patching whenever it's dry. The tank's concrete is bonded to the surrounding earth and it shrinks and expands with the weather. Not good. The older it gets the worse, I suppose. I know at some point I'll have to give up, but that would be heartbreaking to do. When we built that tank we didn't realize we'd actually depend on the water to keep the oasis alive. We thought it would be surplus water. Not. I sure wish we would have constructed it better.

More water added

I now have plenty of water to top off the stucco tank. The big "concrete" tank, which only lacked a few inches of being full, got topped off last night by a small spate of hard rain.

My plan was to finish pumping the water from the upper dirt tank to the lower dirt tank, then from there to the stucco tank, as I posted yesterday. However, the rain replaced what I had pumped out of the upper tank yesterday, giving me a bigger water supply. All day today I've been pumping out that tank and it should be done by dark. The glitch came when the pump moving the water from the lower dirt tank to the stucco tank quit pumping. The lower tank will hold all the water from the upper tank but it was already half full from yesterday's pumping so I needed to get it moving. Finally, at 5 PM, as the lower tank was getting brimful, I found a spark plug and replaced the one on the pump and got it started. I'm so exhausted from working on pumps today. The one in the settling pond quit too. I took the plug out of it and put it into a spare pump that wouldn't run either and like a miracle it took off on the first pull of the rope.

When I'm done, sometime tomorrow, I'll still have water left in the lower dirt tank that the stucco tank won't hold. Since that dirt tank holds water really well, unlike the others, I'll still be able to top off the stucco tank again in a few weeks. So things are looking good. Of course, if it rains tonight and fills everything up, my day's slavery will have been for naught. A chance I have to take. I even had to go to Study Butte and spend $50 on gas for the pumps. Water isn't cheap no matter how you get it. But I love gas pumps when they work like they're supposed to. They move water ten times faster than the electric pumps. Just in case, though, I set up my biggest electric pump today. Moving any water is better than moving no water. This pipe is 1-1/2" in diameter. The gas pump puts out  a 3" diameter stream of water, and with a lot more pressure.

The good thing about the electric pumps is that I can leave them run all night long, whereas the gas pumps need refueling every 2 hours. Also the electric pumps are blessedly quiet.

That darned sapsucker is destroying all the bark from the locust tree. In desperation, I wrapped cloth around the trunk. Hope it helps.

Tank almost topped off finally...

I manage to squeeze the last bit of daylight out of every day. Actually, I'll be topping this tank off by flashlight tonight. If I didn't have loss to evaporation or leakage I would have an awesome abundance of water at my disposal. Still this tank hopefully won't get empty before next May. Then I'll start pumping out of the other bigger tank.

It'll all be worth it when I get photos of wonderful birds. Like maybe a Worm-eating Warbler, or a Black-capped Vireo building a nest..... well, I can dream, can't I!

A little added water

The oasis got nearly an inch of rain but the only place that caught runoff was the upper dirt tank to the east.

So I'm pumping that water down to the lower dirt tank. From there I'll pump it into the concreted "stucco" tank, which I want topped off (see previous post). It'll come close.

Hoping for rain

The oasis was quite birdy this morning, probably migrants ahead of the impending front. I sure hope it brings some rain to the oasis. Here's the tank I need topped off, but the other tank needs a few inches too that were lost to evaporation.

Yesterday Kelly located a Cassin's Vireo that I would have liked to photograph. Although I relocated it this morning, it was too elusive for me to photograph. I got a few warblers for my efforts though.

Townsend's Warbler

Orange-crowned Warbler

Nashville Warbler

Saw this cute lizard on a lily pad. Don't know what kind it is though. Maybe a Trans-Pecos Striped Whiptail.

Those darn sapsuckers

.Here's a Twelve-spotted Skimmer...

Also got better shots of a sapsucker than I had previously. I wasn't sure if this is a Red-naped or a Yellow-bellied, but Kelly Bryan says it's a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Both frequent the oasis. 

 I hate the damage they do to my trees though. This tree is a Honey Locust. It doesn't appear that there's much sap for it to suck from this tree. It's "sap wells" are dry, I think.

A watering day

My definition of a lovely day is a day that's not too hot, not too cold, and not too windy. My definition of a perfect day is all of the above plus not too sunny, and water in my tanks to water with. I love overcast days. Today was another lovely day.(Perfect days only come a couple of times a year.)

Some migrants are moving through, although I didn't take time to photograph them since I can only be here one day, then other obligations need attending to. I spent my time watering the trees, ever mindful that trees grow on water, but water doesn't grow on trees. I'm going to just water once weekly now that the weather is cooler and the trees need to get ready for winter dormancy.

Here's a little Ruby-throated Hummingbird that seems to have damage to the bill.

Oasis lovely but not birdy

The overcast windy weather finally went away and the oasis looks moist and lovely.

Very few birds though.

Hummers swarming in Alpine

I never had this many hummers here at one time before. Cannot keep the feeders full. I believe these are all migrating Ruby-throated Hummingbirds.

I have 12 feeders out and wish I'd brought some more feeders to town from the oasis because I don't have many hummers there. I hear they're swarming like locusts in the Davis Mountains too. I hope the oasis swarms with them next. I'm ready.

Damsels in distress?

It was so windy today I finished the watering I needed to do and headed for cover. Even the damselflies seemed to be clinging for dear life.