Water is not flowing.  Things are not working.  There’s something wrong in paradise!

Usually, Sally fixes it (thus reaffirming my definition of paradise) but this time I thought I’d help.  I have no idea what came over me.  Maybe we need a TV?  

Anyway, when the water stops flowing the first thing we do is ‘walk the line’ and check the connections.  And so we did.  It is always a gas to push through deep brush but winter conditions add a little ‘je ne sais quoi’, you know?

We walked the line back to John’s, about 750 feet down and over the rocky bluff that separates us, and found a problem – or two.  John’s valves had frozen and split.  Water was pouring out.  We made the necessary repairs but it didn’t help John much.  His supply cistern had drained and the repairs only made it so the feeder line bypassed his frozen valves.  He was basically just ‘cut out’ of the system.

No water for John.  None stored.  Broken valves.  And he is not here.  We’ll try to get him fixed up, of course (he usually does it for us) but first we had to get water to the area.  

Our one-kilometer-long ‘system’ is a gravity-feed, stream-sourced 1″ line that starts about 200 feet (elevation) up from the sea back up the hill (about 1000 feet in distance) on the back half of our heavily forested property.  The line ‘falls’ down the hill paralleling the stream.  The ‘pick-up’ for the pipe is in a little pool at the top.  We put the filler end under some mesh and put some rocks to hold it down and the water enters the pick-up and falls uninterrupted until it gets to the beach.  It then stays at sea level in the pipe which is ‘staked to the cliff-side’ for another 1000 feet until it gets to Johns.  Then it climbs up to my place (75 feet in elevation).  In theory I have the pressure you’d expect from a source 125 feet above our heads.   

If it gets that far.

After bypassing John’s cistern it was clear there was still no water.  So we followed the line to the junction in the lower beach rocks.  It had come undone.  We refastened that.

Still no water.

So, we got in the small boat and went to the beach around the corner and checked the line at the ‘tap’ at the bottom of the hill.  Nada.  So, that means more hiking and climbing.  More mud, snow, rain and cold.  Sal and the dogs were happy.  More fun!

John loves these kinds of adventures, too.  I was going to go home and call him.  Sal wouldn’t let me.  “C’mon!  We’ll just hike up through the bushes and fix it!  C’mon!”

I hate her when she gets all macho like that.

We went up halfway and checked the inspection ‘tap’ there.  It had also frozen and split.  We (Sally, actually) pulled that one off and put in a ‘splice’ and up we went to check the rest.

The stream is engorged.  It is a torrent.  Water is flowing like the semi-waterfall it is.  It is dropping 200 feet in 750 or so………that is a good drop rate.  It’s ‘whitewater’.  The stream bed is strewn with deadfall, bushes and boulders.  Getting up is mostly just a leg-climb but, being a smidge portly (especially with ten layers of clothes) I tend to use all fours at times.  Even Sal has to ‘climb’ now and then when it gets steep and muddy.

She went first.  She went fast.  And she called down from the top, “Alright, sweetie?”  

We got to the top.  The water and fallen storm debris was so high we couldn’t find the pick-up but the third inspection tap about 100 feet away was squirting like a geyser so we knew that the water was getting into the pipe system.  And, getting out at that level.  We replaced the broken valve there and put in a splice.  Water was now in the line and the line was intact.

So we went back down to the bottom, opened the inspection tap (the only one that had not frozen) and waited with glee to see the water come gushing forth.  And………we waited.

Still no water.  This is not easily explainable but here goes – the water went in through the pick-up and we patched all the holes in the line.  We opened the bottom to let the air out.  Therefore, we should get water.  Right?

Wrong!  Not if there was still something frozen in the pipe.  And that is what we are thinking.  Now.  We may think of something else later. 

We think there is something frozen (water, probably. Duh) still in the dips and valleys that the pipe creates as it falls down the hill.  So the water that is now in the pipe has to ‘melt’ and push the ice lump until the ice lump melts or it gets small enough to flow to our house.  April, perhaps.  Definitely by May.

This is one of the reasons we go away in the winter.  It is now a more pressing reason to travel.  Soon.  We have about ten days of water before making a cup of tea becomes difficult. 

Who would have expected winter to show up so early!