The Aftermath Caused By Water

Sure am glad I don't have to attach to the sewer system yet.  With the super wet spring following 80" of snowfall, the ground water is high.  When they put in the tower on the other side of my house, first they sunk in about a foot with the heavy equipment and then about 4 foot down hit the ground water.  The clay soil was so wet it actually was liquefied and like quicksand.  Water was flowing into the hole so fast that the tank actually started floating.  They had to pump it full of water to hold in down in place and pump out the hole as they back filled.  All I have to say is that the work crew better get used to it since the other side of the lake is about the same elevation as this hole was.

Setting The Tower

They set one of the neighbor's towers this morning.  I did what I do best...set on the sidelines, took pictures and supervised from a distance.  From start to finish was under 2 hours.

The auger...beats doing it by hand.

Starting the hole.

First load of many.

Shaking the dirt off.

Still drilling.

Setting the tower.

Almost there.

Leveling things out.

Backfilling bottom with crushed rock while keeping things level.

The grinder pump before insertion.

Finished except for hookup and yard work.

What Is It and What Does It Do... (Pt. 2)

Interesting guesses from yesterday's post.  Chip "Rocket Man" Allen actually hit on it but in a different way then he meant.  He said it was a minuteman rocket launcher.  If you can remember when TV commercials lasted only a minute, we used to call people that could use the bathroom and be back when the show restarted "Minute Men".

Well the device shown is what then call a "Grinder Tower" or what is actually a holding tank for a septic system.  We are in a 2 year process of installing a new septic system around the lake.  Last year they put in all the loop lines around the lake and bored in the lateral lines from where they were going to put the tower's and hooked them to the loop.  This year they are in the process of installing the towers and grinders and hooking them to the houses.  About 350 houses around the lake will hook into this system (I'm not one of them since I have a new fully functioning system that is good for about 15+ years yet).

This 12 foot tower will be buried in the ground and inside it will be installed a grinder pump.  It works like a tank on the toilet but automatic in that when the levels reach a certain point the grinder kicks on and since it's located near the bottom, grinds up the solids into a slurry and injects them into the 1 1/2" discharge line and keeps pumping thereby forcing everything into the main line.  The main line is what they call a low-pressure line in that as each pump kicks on, the liquids force everything further down the line.

I hope to have some pictures of them installing the tank in the future but all depends on when they do it.

Broad-winged Hawk

While up on my first trip of the year to Hasty Brook to work on the "R and R" and "Birding Center" for Lynne and Art, we spotted this Hawk setting on a snag.  This was of course between rain storms that lasted the whole time there and a long way off but I tried for some pictures anyway.  They are heavy on Photoshop and cropping (as you can probably tell) but I decided to use them to show that even I can't make a bad picture good even though I tried.  The pictures were taken on two separate days.