Because I forgot we already installed all the drip line around the trees.
Saturday, the 9th was a busy day. It started with a trip in to town to get some chicken feed.
Seppi is getting bigger and stronger every day, it seems.
I don’t have to climb on and off the truck anymore. He can drag them all to the tailgate where I can reach them.
The next task for the day was finishing the garden fence.
Seppi started helping tighten down the bolts on the fence stretcher. So of course Winnie wanted to help.
“No, Daddy, I am big enough! I tan do it!”
That’s using your head.
This allowed us to get the fence stretched, using the truck as an anchor. We left it stretched and then went inside for lunch.
What were Evie and Ellie doing all this time?
Mommy took them to Tacoma Glass Blowing to use the groupon they got for Christmas.
Never too early to learn a trade!
After lunch we stapled the fence at both ends and then cut the gate.
Seppi was able to put a dent in it, but he is not quite strong enough to cut the wire with the dikes yet. And I have no idea where my fencing pliers are.
Once the fence was attached we replaced the back of the manifold. (Fitting, considering we made it for Mother’s Day 3 years ago).
Next task was finishing the frost free hydrant. The hole was quite a bit deeper than it needed to be. This is by design. The water needs a place to drain when the hydrant is shut. We could fill the whole thing with gravel, but that is expensive and unnecessary.
I had the kids toss rocks in the bottom of the hole.
This was much more fun for them, and cheaper for me as it meant I only needed two bags of gravel.
Then we fastened the hydrant to the T-post sunk in the hole.
Arranged the line in (which you can see heading under the fence) and the line out (which you can see heading to the right under Seppi’s feet. Then I made my second big mistake of the day.
I poured in the gravel. This is a mistake with frost hydrants. Never cover them until you have connected everything and turned on the water to check the system for leaks under pressure.
So I had to scrape all that gravel back out of the hole by hand and stack it on the side before I went and turned on the water.
So then I went and turned on the water, and starting at the first splice in the garden I started working my way joint by joint back to the hydrant. As I started, Seppi yelled out to me, “Dad! There are no leaks!”
I yelled back, “Great! I’ll check on it in just a minute.”
When I got back to the hydrant… all the gravel was back in the hole. Seppi had decided it was good enough, and had dumped it all back in. So then I had to scrape it all back out again to verify for sure…
The hydrant elbow was not leaking.
Then I put the gravel back in and covered it with plastic (to keep dirt from percolating down into the rock and stopping it up).
And filled the hole.
It was then that I discovered my first big mistake of the day…
There is very little water pressure coming out of the hydrant.
I am not sure why that is. The branch line leading off to the right has full pressure. I dug down to the stop valve and turned it on to make sure. So why should the hydrant have low pressure when it is only about 8 inches further down the line? Troubleshooting the hydrant mechanism didn’t result in any change in the pressure, and otherwise it functions just fine.
The thing that seems most likely to me is that there is some obstruction in the inlet area, where the hydrant elbow attaches to the hydrant. It is probable that some of the teflon tape came loose when tightening it, and is partially blocking inflow. One of these years when I have time I will dig it up and re-do that attachment, but for now it doesn’t matter because it is being used solely for a low pressure irrigation system.
For that it works just fine.
By this time Winnie was tired, cranky and pretty much over it, but we still had some critical tasks to accomplish.
The fence had to be attached to the t-posts to take the strain off the end posts which were never cemented in, just buried deep and packed tight.
Then, because the T-posts were weakened due to the trench behind them, we had to fill and tamp the trench as best we could so the weight of the fence wouldn’t drag them out of the ground.
Seppi started that process while I was attaching the wire ties.
Then I took it over and got the trench filled the rest of the way.
The final step step was re-attaching the garden gate. This was more challenging than you might think because the tension of the fence had pulled the posts apart somewhat.
This is solved with a ratchet strap, for now. I will get around to making a cool wooden topper to hold them together. One of these days.
Little Farm in the Big City 