Misfitmorgan's Journal - That Summer Dust

[Bruce]

I wouldn't be to comfortable with constantly freezing and thawing PEX. Yes it can take more than copper or PVC but it is still taking a hit everytime it freezes. And blowing a fitting instead of rupturing the "pipe" still makes a big mess, it is just easier to fix

Given a choice I would prefer that wellhouse be on the south side so the sun can warm it. But there is no windchill in it due to the constant west winds. The temp inside will be the same as the temp outside (barring any sun warming). I bet you do get some good "clippers" given your location!!

I'm sure the new drilled well will ease your life and concerns substantially. New source pipe below frost level all the way under the house!

Now what is wrong with a nice "open" well?? The contractors found this one when they were excavating to replace the foundation under the north building of the house. Covered with a large and very heavy piece of sheet steel and a bunch of what I think are drift cutters. I SO wish it had been 15' farther (it was not even 2') from the house, we could have put a nice little well and bucket house over it. I don't even know how someone builds a well like this. It was ~13' deep with 7' of water in it. How do you get rid of the water so you can build up all the stone??


The guy that lives in the property south of us grew up in this house. When his father died in 1999 the house was sold (I think he already lived next door. His 10 acres used to be part of this property). I asked if he knew about the well and he did. There is another similar one (not as deep or nearly as nicely made) out in the woods north of the NW field. And there is a square cement one between the pond and the natural wetland to the north. I really don't understand this one. Not sure what that square in the upper left is. I can imagine the pipe coming in from the left would be "source" since that direction is uphill. But the one going out to the right?? Seems like one wouldn't want the water to go out. There is a fitting of some sort on the pipe, I ASSUME for the pump (probably manual) but that pipe clearly goes through the wall. In the spring it can be full to the top, later in summer, quite dry.



The drilled well, right in front of the house, was done in 1979. That must have been a spectacular day for the family.

 

[babsbag]

PEX makes a mess when it gets chewed through by a mouse too.

Those wells are creepy. I think I would be filling them in with concrete and forgetting that they were ever there. Our well is 300' deep so no way would it be an open well.

We get maybe one good "frozen pipe" kind of freeze here every year but honestly I will take my hot weather over this stupid cold anytime. I can always go swimming when it's hot. Plus there is no mud and and I have an 8 month growing season for my garden. I really enjoy my "no rain" summers too.

 

[Bruce]

I guess, for completeness, I should mention that the contractors filled in that beautiful well.

 

[misfitmorgan]

I wouldn't be to comfortable with constantly freezing and thawing PEX. Yes it can take more than copper or PVC but it is still taking a hit everytime it freezes. And blowing a fitting instead of rupturing the "pipe" still makes a big mess, it is just easier to fix

Given a choice I would prefer that wellhouse be on the south side so the sun can warm it. But there is no windchill in it due to the constant west winds. The temp inside will be the same as the temp outside (barring any sun warming). I bet you do get some good "clippers" given your location!!

I'm sure the new drilled well will ease your life and concerns substantially. New source pipe below frost level all the way under the house!

Now what is wrong with a nice "open" well?? The contractors found this one when they were excavating to replace the foundation under the north building of the house. Covered with a large and very heavy piece of sheet steel and a bunch of what I think are drift cutters. I SO wish it had been 15' farther (it was not even 2') from the house, we could have put a nice little well and bucket house over it. I don't even know how someone builds a well like this. It was ~13' deep with 7' of water in it. How do you get rid of the water so you can build up all the stone??
View attachment 25367 View attachment 25368

The guy that lives in the property south of us grew up in this house. When his father died in 1999 the house was sold (I think he already lived next door. His 10 acres used to be part of this property). I asked if he knew about the well and he did. There is another similar one (not as deep or nearly as nicely made) out in the woods north of the NW field. And there is a square cement one between the pond and the natural wetland to the north. I really don't understand this one. Not sure what that square in the upper left is. I can imagine the pipe coming in from the left would be "source" since that direction is uphill. But the one going out to the right?? Seems like one wouldn't want the water to go out. There is a fitting of some sort on the pipe, I ASSUME for the pump (probably manual) but that pipe clearly goes through the wall. In the spring it can be full to the top, later in summer, quite dry.

View attachment 25369

The drilled well, right in front of the house, was done in 1979. That must have been a spectacular day for the family.

If a fitting blows it is under the house and doesnt do any damage worth worrying about. Also..no way to stop it from freezing that is why we re-plumbed with PEX when we moved on the place.

I didnt mean that the windchill was affecting the well house inside They put it on the west side of the house, and those vents i mentioned up at the roof line they put those going east-west too....so the wind whips thru the well house ceiling stealing any possible heat you might have in there. Because it is an open top well it normally would keep the well house above freezing because the well water doesnt freeze, but since the heat wind blows any warmth out it freezes. We covered the vents but the windows are trailer house type windows...single pane glass and the west window does not seal all the way, so we put insulation over the windows and a board over that to stop the draft which was directly on the well pump/pressure tank. Basically whoever built it is a moron....and the well house is only 12yrs old..it should not be in this condition if it had been taken care of at all or more thoughtfully planned out. We also dont really get sun here in winter so that wouldnt matter much, we get approx 170 days of sunshine/year and most of those are in summer/fall.

There is also no house for the new source pipe to go under per say. It's a trailer so the pipe just goes underground and then comes back under the trailer thru a cement slab. It's also not real source pipe it's some sort of irrigation piping.

To dig an old-timey well the guy started digging in the spot he wanted the well or the spot he was told to dig, when he couldnt throw the dirt out of the hole anymore they would lower a buckets and a bucket of dirt at a time would be taken out...on and on they would go until the hole starting filling with water and then they bucketed out buckets of water and buckets of mud..on and on until they got the depth of standing water they wanted. Then they would rock up the sides and tada a well.

The square cement box.....is a cistern well. A normal old well has no bottom and the water filters up from the bottom and thru the rock walls. A cistern well is a "water-tight" vessel ment to hold water in reserve when needed, cistern wells are filled by rainwater, runoff water, surface water, or like ours an artisan well. There is likely another 1 or 2 of those cement boxes on the property, ment to hold water for the dry seasons i would assume. Typically one cement box collects the water from whatever and then is piped into another cement box which is used either by hooking that box to a pump or having an open top and bucketing it out.

Like at our house we have a cement capped cement well over an artisan well by our driveway in the front yard, then a pipe goes under ground from that cement box to under the well house behind the trailer and into that cement box, to be used by the house. Cistern wells for drinking water are illegal here now because of the possible contaminants as the water is not filtered by the ground.

 

[misfitmorgan]

PEX makes a mess when it gets chewed through by a mouse too.

Those wells are creepy. I think I would be filling them in with concrete and forgetting that they were ever there. Our well is 300' deep so no way would it be an open well.

We get maybe one good "frozen pipe" kind of freeze here every year but honestly I will take my hot weather over this stupid cold anytime. I can always go swimming when it's hot. Plus there is no mud and and I have an 8 month growing season for my garden. I really enjoy my "no rain" summers too.

So far no mice chewing on it....i like your warm weather better too! That's why i used to take a trip to Calie every winter.

 

[Bruce]

Interesting. I wonder if there is another cistern well down in the wetland and that is what the north pipe goes to. I've never mucked about in there. If there is one, the wooden cover has likely rotted away long ago since it is wet in there pretty much spring until winter. I didn't check this year during the dry time when the pond was shrinking. Could be it dried some then.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Interesting. I wonder if there is another cistern well down in the wetland and that is what the north pipe goes to. I've never mucked about in there. If there is one, the wooden cover has likely rotted away long ago since it is wet in there pretty much spring until winter. I didn't check this year during the dry time when the pond was shrinking. Could be it dried some then.

It's quite possible, i have never seen a cistern well not come in at least pairs. The other cistern would be someplace it gets a lot of water. How deep was the cement one you found? There is typically one deep cement box and one much more shallow. The box on the artisan well is only about 4-5ft deep and goes back to the cistern well which is 12ft deep...so that automatically makes your grade for you so that you can use gravity to pump the artisan well water into our cistern well. DH corrected me he said its more like 12ft deep cause it goes down 4ft before it hits water and he said there should be at least 6 ft of water in it and typically they are at least 12ft deep. Cistern is just a fancy way of saying a giant holding tank. I definitely would not be walking around randomly looking for a open well. You do have a bit of a clue though since you can see the hoses and odds of them cooming off the well and taking a 90 degree turn are not high.

I forgot too the little square should be where the artisian well is or where the ground water comes in, its to let water in pretty much. Some places used to make chains of these shallow cisterns so they could store thousands of gallons of water for dry seasons. If they dug down for a cistern and the whole filled up with "good" water they would leave that bottom opening to collect more water as long as it was not the/a "holding" cistern. The tanks at the end of the run that are ment to do nothing but hold water only have the tubes that go into them and one coming out for using the water. Cement boxes at the beginning of the chain only have a tube going out. The ones that were in use until just a few decades ago usually will have a cement cover over them if they are not in/under a structure.

 

[Bruce]

There isn't currently a cistern south (uphill) of the one I posted. I had thought maybe at one point there was an actual controlled overflow for the pond that fed in through the pipe on the south end of the cistern. If there IS a cistern to the south, it has to be at ground level, maybe filled in? Al has mowed over that whole area and his tractor didn't disappear. And I've mowed over it with my garden tractor, didn't lose it either I would guess it is 10' to 12' deep. Maybe 6' or 8' square? I never thought about it much. It has a sloped metal roof (wood framed) with a square "cap" that I took off to get the picture. Great info on that square hole in the bottom being the "inlet" for ground water.

I suppose another possibility is that the pond was built to replace an older cistern? There is a "sometimes spring" in the south end which is all ledge. Al doesn't know when the pond was built. He is pushing 70 and his great uncle owned this house until the mid 50's. Al grew up on his grandfather's (then his father's) farm up the road. He and his wife own the farm now. Back then the first 3/4 mile of road was those 2 farms. In years passed (many) his father leased and hayed the fields, his dad raised beef cattle. I gather Al hayed the fields for many years. The guy who bought this place from Al's great uncle didn't farm and some years ago sold about half of the 120 acres to the guy who lives between Al and us. He's put 3 houses on his property. His is up the hill (west) and can't be seen. The other 2 are closer to the road. One visible year round, the other pretty much only in the winter when the leaves are gone.

With all that TMI, it is possible that the north end of the pond (which was built up to create the pond) could possibly house a cistern. If so I guess I am glad that when I tried to find out how deep it is (near as I can tell NOT VERY!!) in bib waders with a long stick. Sank into the muck to mid boot on the first step. Sank to the top of the other boot on step 2. If the boots weren't attached to the pants, they would still be in the pond when I backed out after that. But I think I would be able to see a square concrete thing unless it is filled in with muck. On a calm day with the sun up and the water getting low, it sure looks pretty flat across the bottom. No idea how the fish and frogs make it through the winter.

 

[misfitmorgan]

There isn't currently a cistern south (uphill) of the one I posted. I had thought maybe at one point there was an actual controlled overflow for the pond that fed in through the pipe on the south end of the cistern. If there IS a cistern to the south, it has to be at ground level, maybe filled in? Al has mowed over that whole area and his tractor didn't disappear. And I've mowed over it with my garden tractor, didn't lose it either I would guess it is 10' to 12' deep. Maybe 6' or 8' square? I never thought about it much. It has a sloped metal roof (wood framed) with a square "cap" that I took off to get the picture. Great info on that square hole in the bottom being the "inlet" for ground water.

I suppose another possibility is that the pond was built to replace an older cistern? There is a "sometimes spring" in the south end which is all ledge. Al doesn't know when the pond was built. He is pushing 70 and his great uncle owned this house until the mid 50's. Al grew up on his grandfather's (then his father's) farm up the road. He and his wife own the farm now. Back then the first 3/4 mile of road was those 2 farms. In years passed (many) his father leased and hayed the fields, his dad raised beef cattle. I gather Al hayed the fields for many years. The guy who bought this place from Al's great uncle didn't farm and some years ago sold about half of the 120 acres to the guy who lives between Al and us. He's put 3 houses on his property. His is up the hill (west) and can't be seen. The other 2 are closer to the road. One visible year round, the other pretty much only in the winter when the leaves are gone.

With all that TMI, it is possible that the north end of the pond (which was built up to create the pond) could possibly house a cistern. If so I guess I am glad that when I tried to find out how deep it is (near as I can tell NOT VERY!!) in bib waders with a long stick. Sank into the muck to mid boot on the first step. Sank to the top of the other boot on step 2. If the boots weren't attached to the pants, they would still be in the pond when I backed out after that. But I think I would be able to see a square concrete thing unless it is filled in with muck. On a calm day with the sun up and the water getting low, it sure looks pretty flat across the bottom. No idea how the fish and frogs make it through the winter.

Sorry BYH didnt notify me of this post. If you have a "high" water table on the property it is very possible the pond was put in in place of the cistern. You used to be able to water livestock from surface water so many farmers would make ponds on their property or purposely fence across streams so their livestock has water access. You have to remember that back in the day there was no way you were going to bucket a few hundred gallons of water from your pump faucet in your kitchen out to the livestock daily. The cistern and even the open wells were not made to withstand that kind of use and would have run the cistern/well dry daily to get livestock water. In warmer climates they of course had things like windmill drawn water tanks but in cold climates like we live in it wasnt reasonable. Be option was ponds/streams, though streams were preferred as running water takes longer to freeze and requires constant colder temps to stay frozen solid.

The real history and lay out of old wells/cisterns can often never be figured out. Some properties have many wells simply because a well went dry or got full of silt at some point and the land owner decided...hey its time for a new well. Even in modern days now because do the same thing because they want either a deep well, a shallow well or even for reasons like trying to get rid of sulfer in their water.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Eva should be at approx 6 weeks pregnant now.

Sarah's piglets are 12 weeks old now and growing well. The gilt is the least friendly but all are friendly towards people.

The male llama likes me just fine and lets DH hug on him and lean on him, he often follows me around the barn. The female llama has calmed down a lot and lets me feed her grain out of the grain scoop and even has let me touch her face a bit.

Sadly DH's grandfather passed away at 6:56am christmas morning. It was very hard on DH because he was like DH's father to him and DH could not make it out to Iowa in time to say his goodbye in person.

The people we lease the farm from dropped a $700/month lease on our doorstep about a week and a half ago. The most ironic part is first we just paid for a new well pump...yeah thats coming off the rent for sure...and the entire reason we dont have our loan yet was from them dragging their feet. We were suppose to wait until they had their stuff off the place per the original agreement and now they dont wanna get it off. They flat out told us they are hard up for money so are charging us rent now. DH wanted to knock their heads off he was so livid!! I have conceded to pay one months rent to them after deducting the current taxes and the cost of the well pump so heir first months rent will be $299. The worst they can do is evict us and as soon as the loan goes thru we can move back in. They have no legal recourse to cancel their agreement for us to purchase the property. They could try to take use to court but the amount of things wrong with the place including the well not being to code they would have one heck of a time getting the money from the judge...esp after getting the asking price on the property paid to them. They also can not damage the property as it says they are not allowed to in the sale contract.

The $700/month to rent the place is so laughable it is rediculous. What are we paying $700 for? They do zero maintenance, zero clean up, pay zero bills, we pay property taxes, etc etc....this place is literally not costing them a penny atm. I find it hard to believe a judge would find in their favor after all the documented work we put into the place.