A Minor Project Finished

It took about 2 weeks but I finally got the 100 foot of plastic pipe I ordered in. Originally the store said they had like 10 rolls of it in stock but when I went to pick it up all they had was perforated stuff and that wouldn't help me at all.

The problem is the back of my barn. The barn here at the Small-Hold was originally built for a much larger farm than can be boasted with a mere 25 acres like we have today. Seriously the thing is about the half the size of a football field and hasn't had any maintenance done to it in about 30 years or more until we took it over.

I am not sure how the water run off was dealt with in the past but the old gutters, which are some nice heavy duty things I might add, just dump the runoff right on to the ground. This creates a muddy mess as you can imagine. One side drains out into the pasture which isn't my concern right now but the other half comes right down into the area you see pictured above. Usually from about March until July it is a muddy swamp back there and I am tired of it.

My temporary solution for this Spring is to put the 100 foot of 4 inch pipe off the drain spout and just run it out into the hayfield. I will more than likely go ahead and bury it after I have figured out a few other minor issues but unless we have a drought the rains should start soon and I want to see if this 4 inch pipe is going to be able to keep up so for right now I am running it all above ground and will just move it out of the way.

Of course the current LasVegas odds are 70 to 1 it get's run over by my step father before this Spring is finished. I am going to have to just keep an eye on it and run it out myself when we are forecast for rain.

I had to do some serious ethnic engineering and use some baling wire to get the thing hung sturdy enough on the barn.

The brace things you can buy that supposedly go with this pipe are not really strong enough to hold the pipe when it is empty. I can only imagine what would happen if there was all that water running down it so I wired it up in a couple of places as well.

This is all part of my plan to get the back half of the barn painted this year. The trees you see on the right of the picture will all be getting cut out over the next few weeks as well. You can also see I had to attach a bit of an extra wooden support to even use the metal brace.

If this pipe configuration proves up to the water capacity than I will design some way to divert water into another catchment system and bury the pipe for the overflow. My hope is this will divert all that water that collects up behind the barn so any vehicles we take in and out of there won't sink to their axles any longer.

I need to let this area dry out a bit as well to figure out how deep the pipe will need to go underground to keep it from being crushed by the heavy tractors and trucks. Right now the ground is so wet you have to dig down almost a foot or more just to hit anything solid and I still have standing water under the layer of wood chips I put down.

If it all goes as planned I will dig the trench, spread out the load of gravel that's already there and make the swampy area usable.

We are forecast for rains tonight and tomorrow so hopefully I can get an idea how this is all going to work. I will keep my fingers crossed.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!