Saturday was a brief spell of good weather between two rainy stretches. I took advantage of it to replace one of the frost-free hydrants.
Taking off the old hydrant is easy. Just pin the elbow on the bottom and twist it off. I took the extra step of cutting the poly pipe and installing a 1″ Poly to 3/4″ PEX tee.
Softened the poly with the torch and then clamped it while still hot to deform the plastic around the grooves in the stab fitting.
Worn out five-gallon bucket will make a good retainer.
Filled with gravel to allow the water to drain.
Covered with a feed sack to keep the dirt from seeping down in between the rocks. Then covered up.
Rookie mistake, I forgot to turn the water on and check for leaks before I buried it. Hopefully all my connections were good. When I turn the water on, if the little blue wheel starts spinning I’ll have to dig it all up again.
Finally replaced the gasket on this thing. Note, the replacement gasket they sent is about 2mm thicker than the original, possibly because it hasn’t been compressed yet. This creates a 1-2mm gap around the seam between the black and the yellow on the housing. It does not leak (yet) and the pressure holds a good 5 or 10 minutes. However, we have also discovered that even with the pump turned off, the water will gravity feed out of the tank out of any hydrant on the farm (for now, while the water level is high). We will probably gravity feed as our primary, and use the pump as back up if we need to pressurize anything, e.g. a sprinkler.
Little Farm in the Big City 