7/15-17/13 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

Before I left, I loaded the truck with a bunch of yard waste. On the way, I delivered Tianna to Big Blast and then proceeded on to visit Uncle Charles. I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 1:30.

I had my lunch and a nap and then after putting on bug juice, I went down and unloaded the yard waste and piled it on the compost pile. I parked the truck, hooked up the electronic rodent repeller, and then went into the woods and watered all the giant sequoia trees. I discovered that the hose had gotten kinked so the tree named Brian was not getting any water from the hose. So I gave Brian a half bucket of water along with the rest of the trees and then I worked out the kink to restore the water flow.

While I was in that neck of the woods, I went over and checked on the spring. The temporary dam was still holding although the top was leaking and the water level was down an inch or so from maximum. I plugged the leaks, sort of, with parts of the plastic bag.

On Tuesday I started on the second of my three-phase approach to fixing the spring. That was to remove the 580 lb. lid of the springbox and try plugging the leaks with bentonite. I started by making a bipod of two 8-foot 2x4s.

As a connector for the top, I used a forked half-inch bolt that I had gotten somewhere. The forked end was like the end of a shackle with a 1/2 inch pin in it. The bolt part was long enough to fasten the two 2x4s together at one end and I planned to use the shackle end to connect the hook of a come-along. The come-along would be chained to a tree. The bipod would lean out over the top of the springbox with another come-along hanging down connected to the lid of the springbox. With that rigging, I can lift the lid off the springbox and swing it over to one side.

Then I loaded up my Trapper Nelson backpack with two come-alongs, two chains, a couple other tools and carried it and the bipod up to the spring. I rigged up the bipod but I was a little concerned about the tree I used. I had used this tree 20 years ago for the same purpose but now it was dead. And when I wrapped the chain around it, it sounded hollow and weak. I wasn't sure it would hold.

It is a huge cottonwood tree and the trunk is about 2 1/2 feet in diameter. It reaches 80 to 100 feet in the air and those bare dead branches up that high are a little intimidating. I thought about getting a hard hat, but I figured that if I got hit on the head from a branch up that high it wouldn't make any difference whether I was wearing a hard hat or not. Instead I figured that being so high any branch would take so long to fall that I would have time after hearing a crack to look up and be able to dodge the branch. Believe me, I was extra wary each time I advanced the come-along each single click.

I clicked the come-along just enough to lift up one edge of the lid just a little. I left the rigging like that while I went back to the cabin to get more equipment.

In the cabin I filled 3 gallon jugs and a half-gallon jug with water. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to restore running water before nightfall, so I prepared to have this much on hand just in case. I spent quite a bit of time looking for a strap wrench that I planned to use to remove the cleanout cap. I finally found the wrench but there was a part missing. After looking for the part and trying to figure out how to fix it by making a part, I decided that the wrench wouldn't work after all and I left it behind. Then I packed a 50 lb. sack of bentonite in my Trapper Nelson along with two stillson wrenches, a flashlight, hammer, and my home-made rebar chisel, and carried that and a bucket back up to the spring.

After setting all the stuff down, I took the sandbag dam apart and tried to salvage as much of the sand as possible because I needed to rebuild the dam before I quit for the day. I picked most of the sand up in the plastic bag and put it in the bucket. I was able to scoop up quite a bit more with my hands and put it in the bucket too.

The rebar chisel and hammer worked pretty well to loosen up and remove the brass cap over the cleanout nipple. The cleanout nipple is the lowest of the three. There was hardly enough clearance to the concrete so I used the same hammer and chisel to chip away the concrete to make room for the cap to come off.

It took some work, but I did get the cap removed. To loosen the cap, I drove the chisel into the left edge of the cap rim and tapped on it with the hammer. After a few blows, I could tell that the cap was beginning to turn. After it turned a quarter turn or so I had the sinking feeling that I had not loosened the cap but instead had broken the nipple loose from the concrete and that the entire nipple and cap were turning together. After a few more blows I was relieved to find out that the cap was really coming off.

Next I used the two stillson wrenches to open up a union in the copper water pipe that was up close to the bell that went over the take-off pipe nipple. That allowed me to lift the water pipe up out of the creek and drag it back to the bank and out of the way. I didn't want dirt getting into my water pipe while I was working on the spring. At this point I had no water service at the cabin.

With the plumbing all opened up, I cranked on the lower come-along and lifted the lid up off the springbox. Then I cranked on the upper come-along to pull the bipod back which swung the lid back away from the springbox a foot or two. That also raised the lid higher, so I backed the lower come-along down so that the lid wasn't suspended so high in the air. I left it six or eight inches above the springbox and then went back to the cabin for lunch and a short nap.

When I went back up to the spring, I shot some videos explaining what I was doing. At the spring I set the camera up on a tripod and shot videos of most of my work from then on. Unfortunately I filled up the camera's memory card before I finished so I only have an incomplete video record of the work.

To start with I used my home-made wood tongs to pull roots out from the inside of the springbox. I don't have any idea where the plants are that own those roots, but I tore them out anyway. In the process, I noticed the stainless steel screen that had covered the water take-out nipple and which was now lying on the bottom of the spring. It was still intact and as bright and clean as when it was new exactly 20 years ago. But where was the brass sleeve that it was attached to and which held it to the nipple?

I looked inside and out for that brass sleeve and finally found a few fragments that clearly showed that the thing had dissolved and disintegrated over the 20 years. There was virtually nothing left of it.

The plan for the day was to dump bentonite into the spring in an attempt to plug the leaks under the springbox wall. But before I did that, I studied the situation to see whether or not that was really a good idea.

One puzzle was that there is a considerable flow of water from the hillside a couple yards uphill from the springbox. That water flows around the springbox in a channel that I deliberately made when I poured the concrete floor around the spring. The puzzle was why there is so much water this time of year. Usually the flow from there stops shortly after all the snow has melted in the spring but here it is the middle of July. What worried me was that the bottom of the spring might be clogged up and the water can't easily get in so it comes out of the hillside further up.

If that's the case, then putting bentonite in the spring might make the problem worse and plug up the spring altogether.

To see if the spring might be clogged up, I got the posthole digger and attempted to dig out the sand or whatever was plugging up what should have been rocks and gravel. I tried for a while and got a little sand, but mostly I got rocks, which is what should be down there. It didn't seem to be clogged up, at least not where I could reach it.

So I decided to try the bentonite. But first I replaced the cleanout cap so that the water flow would be down through the leakage where I wanted the bentonite to go. It took a while to get the threads on the cap started but once they were engaged, I could screw the cap back on pretty easily. I left it just hand tight.

I decided not to dump the whole 50 pounds of bentonite in to start with. Instead I decided to pour a small coffee can of it right up against the downstream wall of the springbox. I expected the bentonite to get wet, absorb the water, and sink to the bottom. Instead it stayed dry and just floated around on top of the water all over the spring.

I probed at the floating bentonite with my wood tongs trying to wet it and sink it, but it was stubborn and just kept floating in blobs. The blobs then flowed out the take-off nipple and into the creek.

It seemed as though the experiment had failed, but on the other hand, it also seemed that the water level coming out the take-off pipe had come up a little. Maybe it was going to work after all. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to wet the bentonite first before dumping it in and that way maybe it wouldn't float.

I mixed up a batch of bentonite and water in the small coffee can until I got a thick clay. It took a lot of water to do it but when I got it mixed, I poured it into the springbox and tamped it down next to the downstream wall. That seemed to work well enough to warrant making a second batch and pouring that in too. The water level came up a little higher after that, but there was still quite a bit of leakage.

After looking at the situation for a while, I decided that even though it would probably work for a while, it was not a satisfactory solution. I was going to have to enlarge the concrete springbox by building an annex to it downstream for 3 feet or so. I decided to put things back together and begin planning for a major construction project to build the annex.

In order to let the spring settle and clear up, I left it alone and carried a bunch of tools and the bentonite back to the cabin. When I got back the spring was running clear so I hooked the plumbing back up. The water level inside the springbox was nearly up to the overflow pipe so I lowered and replaced the springbox lid. Then I went all the way down to the bottom where the hose discharges into the creek and opened the valve. I expected the water to gush out along with a lot of trapped air. Instead there was nothing. This was deja vu. It had happened to me many times before, but not since I had installed the final plumbing at the top that didn't require the establishment of a siphon.

Then I opened the joint halfway up the hill where the copper joins a hose and there was some flow there with a lot of air coming out. I waited for the air to come out and when there was a good steady flow, I closed the joint again. Then I closed the valve at the bottom again and checked the cabin. There was only a dribble up there. Air gurgled out with the small amount of water and I figured that when enough air came out, the full flow would return. It didn't.

It was at the end of the day, I was exhausted, sore, dirty, soaking in sweat, mosquito bit, and ready to quit. Fortunately the dribble coming out of the faucet was both hot and cold. There wasn't enough pressure to get anything out of the shower head, but there was enough to take a bath. So that's what I did. The dribble was slow but constant so I just relaxed, taking a long bath which I greatly appreciated. I figured that if the flow didn't re-establish itself overnight, I would work on it in the morning. I had had enough for one day.

On Wednesday morning, the water pressure was slightly better. It reached the shower head but it filled only about 1/4 of the holes. I went down to the bottom where the hose discharges into the creek and opened the valve. There was a pretty good flow of water there but not much pressure. I could easily stop the flow with my thumb and I could tell it wasn't up to normal.

I left the valve open at the bottom and went up to the spring to check. The temporary dam was still holding at about 90% which was plenty adequate. But I stuffed a plastic bag and some sand in around where it was leaking over the top and that raised the level to 100%. I pulled a rock out of the creek that was holding up a section of the copper pipe, and after the rock was removed, I pushed the pipe down into a straighter shape. Then I packed up all the remaining tools and tackle and brought them back to the cabin.

Then I went down to the bottom and closed the valve. Back up in the cabin the pressure inside was a little better. The shower head was about 1/3 full. Still not good. So I took a vise-grip and a channel lock pliers down to the low point of the supply plumbing where the hose ties back in to the copper line to the cabin and opened that joint. A lot of air hissed and gurgled out and after a while a pretty strong flow of water started coming out. Of course the line going up to the cabin drained all the way out too, but I figured that air would all get blown out easily when I hooked it up again.

I left the joint open and the water running while I went to the bottom and opened that valve, then back up to the cabin I turned on the bathtub faucet so that air could escape. Then I went back down to the open joint. There was good pressure and a strong flow down there now so I hooked the joint back up again. There was so much pressure that I got pretty soaking wet trying to get that joint hooked up again with the water running like that.

Then I went back down to the bottom, closed that valve, and then went back up to the cabin. After a bunch of air came gurgling out, the pressure came up to where it filled 80 to 90% of the holes in the shower head. That was good enough. It would get better as more air came out. For now I was done with it and I happily turned my attention to something else.

I started on a really fun project. I started putting together a temporary faucet system for the kitchen sink. Of the two sinks, the kitchen had the higher priority. If it worked then I could cook and do dishes in the kitchen using the kitchen sink which would be a delightful new first at Camp Serendipity. Having the bathroom sink working wouldn't be much better than having the bathtub working from the standpoint of cooking and washing dishes.

I also had most of the parts to make a final faucet configuration for the bathroom but I didn't have any parts for a final kitchen sink. I was unable to find a cheap kitchen faucet set that had a swivel spout so I really didn't have a plan for a final faucet.

I did, however, have a plan for a temporary faucet set in the kitchen and I had all the parts. So I eagerly started fabricating and assembling the parts.

The plan was to have two 1/2" brass ball valves on top of the sink feeding the two ends of a 1/2" copper tee which would feed a spout fashioned of 1/2" sweated copper pipe. The other (outside) ends of the ball valves would be connected to 1/2" street ells which would go straight down through the granite counter top in the outside two holes. The ells would be connected to pex pipes that would in turn be connected to two additional ball valves which would be connected to the pex supply pipes. The last two valves would serve as shut-off valves.

I really enjoy soldering copper pipes so I had a great time getting all the parts ready, fluxing them, and then taking them out on the porch where I did the soldering. I really liked the look of the thing after it was cooled off and I am eager to hook it up next week.

By the time I was ready to leave for home, the water pressure filled 100% of the showerhead holes and seemed to even be stronger than ever. I left for home at 1:30 feeling good about my plumbing progress even though I realized that phase 2 of my springbox plan was not going to be the end of the story. I will be spending a lot of time in late summer and fall working on phase 3 which will mean a concrete annex to the springbox.

7/19/13 (Friday) I had a delightful breakfast with Dave where I updated him on my plumbing exploits. When I described my temporary jury-rigged kitchen faucet plans, he liked the idea and suggested that I make a "feature" out of it. He suggested setting the plumbing in wooden mounts and make wooden handles for the valves. I could even make a wooden spout. That was an excellent idea. We talked about several options and ideas and after I left him I decided to mount the top valves in a half-log, hollow out a curved branch and embed the spout in that, and cover the valve handles with short branches. All the wood parts could be cut with a drawknife finish with chisel chamfers on the edges, and varnished to match the logs in the building. I think it will look fantastic. Maybe I won't want to get any fancier fixtures at all.