Mommy has strep throat, so Daddy took the older three kids to the farm to give her time to recuperate. While there we worked on burying the first run of PEX pipe.
Now, the trick to burying pipe for longevity is to make sure that there are no rocks next to the pipe. With movement of the pipe from fluctuations in water pressure, and movement of the soil from freeze/thaw cycles, over time this can wear a hole in the pile and cause a leak.
On professional sites, they usually put a sand bed in the bottom of the trench a few inches deep, then lay the pipe, then pour another few inches of sand on top of that, before backfilling the trench. Here on the farm we did not want to spend the money on a load of sand, nor have to make multiple trips to carry enough sand to do the job in our little half-ton pickup. So Daddy came up with another option.
It is a game called, “Let’s Find All the Rocks that Daddy Missed.”
Daddy went backwards along the trench with a hoe, leveling the bottom and loosening the soil and pulling out all the rocks he could find. The kids followed behind, looking for any rocks he had missed.
The penalty was one pushup per rock (bigger than the end of Daddy’s thumb).
Ellie was enjoying it a little too much. Every time she found a rock she would hold it up: “Is this big enough?”
“No.”
“Is this big enough?”
“No.”
“Is this big enough?”
“Yes.”
“Yes!! Another one! You have to do another pushup!!!”
For the very reasonable price of 85 pushups and an hour of fun, the first half of the trench was cleared.
Then to back fill it we cobbled together a screen with 1/2″ wire mesh and 2×4 scraps. This keeps all the significant rocks out and lets us put down a few inches of dirt directly on the pipe before we backfill the rest of the spoil.
The chickens greatly enjoy the whole operation, because they love scratching through the loose dirt.
Give us this day our daily bugs.
Little Farm in the Big City 