Elemental my dear Jennifer: Water, Wellies & Mud!

Its late on Monday evening and we notice that the water pressure in our taps has reduced dramatically. Hmm? This can only mean one thing - somewhere along the 200m pipe between our 20,000 litre water tank and our house is a dreaded LEAK. Its dark and raining, so for now we can only hope the leak isn't immediately adjacent to the house and take ourselves off to bed for a night of apocalyptic dreaming - flood, famine, drought....

Tuesday dawns chilly yet thankfully sunny. Tam checks the route of the pipe to the water tank - and when she gets to the tank finds it completely empty. That's a BIG leak somewhere along the pipe - but with all the rain, everything is soaked, so no obviously wet areas. We turn off the supply from the tank to our house - at least the tank can fill up again. So for the time being no water from the taps, no washing up, no washing machine, no showers, no flushing loo and no idea where the leak is....by this time Jenny is in a particularly grumpy mood and has completely lost sight of her pioneering spirit - in fact, she's not sure if she ever had one....

Once the tank is half filled again via the 1km pipe from the creek (currently leak free!), we turn the supply to the house back on and walk the route of the pipe - and there, thankfully, in the middle of the paddock below a tap, is an obviously gushing and gurgling leak. The pipe the tap is mounted on comes away in our hands - we've found the problem. Jenny's mood lifts, much to Tam's relief. We're back in control. Feeling very relieved that it was so easy to locate the leak (this time!), we get on with fixing things and getting our precious water supply back.

Firstly we have to dig down about a foot into the heavy water-logged clay without causing further damage to the pipes and find the problem - at least its sunny, imagine having to do this in the rain! We then flush out the pipes before replacing the joiner - this requires advanced communication techniques - Jenny (at the tank) whistles thrice when she turns the water on, Tam (down at the leak) whistles thrice to request the water is turned off again - ooh its all mod cons up at Blue Knob!

Once the joiner is cleared of mud and replaced to our satisfaction, we set about designing and making a makeshift inspection pit, so that we don't have to dig this all up again in the future. Utilising our ready supply of spare breeze blocks from recent demolition work (read earlier blogs) and with further messing around in gloopy mud, voila:

Its certainly not pretty, and possibly not cow-proof (we do have occassional cattle randomly taking a wander through our garden probably from our neighbours farm!) but WE FIXED THE LEAK AND made the inspection chamber ourselves! So we're quite proud. And whilst we are entirely responsible for our own water supply, we don't pay ANY water rates, so inspecting pipelines and fixing leaks is all part of living the dream! I am my very own Water Board.

Suffice to say, we are delighted to turn on taps and see fresh mountain spring water gushing forth and we have an immensely increased appreciation of the basic stuff of life, be it earth, air, fire or water. Which reminds me, must get on with collecting firewood, its pretty chilly these mid-winter nights.