10/8-10/13 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

After dropping Tianna off at Big Blast, I returned home and packed up the truck. I tried to call Priscilla and discovered that her phone was still not working. I stopped in to see her on my way and learned that the phone company had fixed her line since I had tried to call. I visited with her for a while and then proceeded on to Monroe where I visited with Uncle Charles.

The trip over the mountains was gorgeous. The leaves were at or near their peak and there was fresh new snow in the mountains with a clear blue sky. People were parked alongside the road taking pictures.

I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 1:10. Ernie was soon there to greet me and he got more than his usual share of hugs and biscuits. He gets a lot more attention when Bert is not there. I drove the truck up to the cabin where I unloaded a lot of stuff before backing back down and parking.

There was one mouse caught in the trap behind the wood stove, so there is evidently still some way for them to get in. The rodent wars continue.

After hoisting the flag, having lunch and a nap, I set to work to make another attempt at plugging the leak in the springbox. The weather was supposed to be clear and dry all day Wednesday and into Thursday so this was the perfect opportunity to do this job. There may not be another opportunity before winter sets in.

I got the parts and reassembled the bipod I use as a derrick to lift the springbox lid and took it, two come-alongs, two chains, and about 20 lb. of hydraulic cement up to the spring. I erected the derrick and cranked on the come-alongs enough to begin lifting the lid. I left it rigged up and then went back to the cabin for the night. At sundown, I retired the flag. I really enjoy having that flagpole and having a flag flying over Camp Serendipity. Flying the flag is now a daily ritual. I should have set up a flagpole years ago.

On Wednesday I made a long-handled scooper by screwing a tin can to the end of a 3-foot 2x2. The plan was to use this to excavate gravel, sand, and bentonite from inside the springbox. That shouldn't hurt the flow of water any, and it should give me better access to the area where the water is leaking out.

Next, I loaded up the wheelbarrow with the new scooper, the big metal mortar mixing box, a shovel, a hoe, a flashlight, two coffee cans, a small plastic scoop, another 25 lb. of hydraulic cement, a hammer, my home-made rebar chisel, three 5-gallon buckets, and a 4-gallon bucket. Then I wheeled the tools up the Pipe Trail almost to the spring where I realized that I had forgotten to bring the stiff mason's brush for cleaning up the tools. I went back to the cabin and got the brush.

Then I turned the wheelbarrow around so that I could pull it backward for the last 20 yards to the spring. There was a log, a ditch, and some other obstructions that made it easier to go backwards than forwards with the wheelbarrow.

I should have written out a detailed plan for my activities like I used to always do on this project, but regrettably, I didn't. Instead, I started by dismantling my sandbag dam in order to lower the water level. What I forgot to do first was to fill three buckets with water which I was going to need for mixing concrete and cleaning up the tools. I realized my mistake as soon as the water level went down to about one inch in the bottom of the creek bed.

So to pay for my error, I had to painfully dip coffee cans half full of water from a small hole in the creek bed and fill the three buckets with them. I had to fill the coffee can slowly to keep debris and dirt from going in the can, and I had to do it on my knees or my haunches on the irregular bedrock outcrop, both positions being painfully uncomfortable. But I got the buckets filled and had a sore back when I finally straightened up.

Next I closed the supply valve on my water pipe to keep any dirt out of the pipe and to try to prevent all the water in the pipe from running out. I had closed the valve down at the creek to keep the water in the system, but I know there are leaks in the system here and there so I knew there was going to be air in the pipes no matter what I did.

Closing the valve was a little embarrassing. When I tried to turn the handle, it wouldn't budge. I immediately thought that the ball inside had seized up and that the valve was not as high quality as I had thought. I tried levering the handle, and I even whacked on it with a hammer and it still wouldn't move. I had almost given up when it dawned on me that there was a lock on the thing that needed to be slid up in order to unlock the handle. When I did that, I felt really stupid and the handle turned easily and smoothly. At least now the valve was shut.

But as soon as the valve was shut, I heard a hissing sound coming from a union in the pipe a few feet downstream. The union was normally under water but now with the water level so low, the union was partly up in the air and it was sucking air in. I weighted the union down with a rock to keep it under water so I couldn't hear the hiss. I also went back to the cabin and got two big Stillson wrenches which I used in vain to tighten up the union to stop the hissing. Then I decided to waste no more time on that problem and just let it go.

Next I used the hammer and my rebar chisel to loosen and take off the cleanout cap. That lowered the water level in the springbox pool to the level of the outflow creek. Then I cleared debris from the creek wherever there were ripples in order to lower the level as much as it could be lowered.

I was now ready to start working inside the springbox so I cranked on the come-alongs and removed the lid. I lowered it so that one edge of it rested on the edge of the springbox and the other edge rested on a big rock on the up-hill side. Then I realized that I should have brought a small trowel to help shape the concrete and I figured that I should be taking pictures of the work so I went back to the cabin to get the camera and the trowel.

Back in the cabin, I realized that I had forgotten to bring the camera, but fortunately I had my cell phone, so I decided to use that instead. I also noticed that it was already 11:00 so I decided to have an early lunch and save another round trip walking between the spring and the cabin.

After lunch and a short nap, I went back up to the spring and tried my new scooper. It didn't work at all. I got out a knife and cut the tin can so that it had a narrow point on it and tried it again. It still didn't work so I tried the hoe. That worked pretty well. I could slide it under the sand and bentonite and lift it up out of the srpingbox and dump its small load into a bucket. It was slow going, but I got quite a bit of material off the bottom of the spring that way.

After filling half a bucket with sand, bentonite, and gravel, the hoe was scraping against the irregular surface of fractured bedrock and wasn't able to pick up much more. At that point, I hung my body over the edge of the springbox at the hip and excavated the bottom with my bare hands. I had a coffee can in there with me and I deposited handfuls of mostly sand, but some gravel into the coffee can one by one. That worked well, not only to scoop up material, but also to give me an idea of what the shape of the rocks was and where the leaks might be occurring.

I discovered that there was a big—-I estimated about 2 quarts in size—-cavity under the cleanout pipe and to the left of that under a ledge in the bedrock wall. It seemed pretty clear to me that that is where the leak is because neither the concrete I poured to make the box nor the concrete to make the slab on the outside had reached into this cavity. And in both cases, the concrete had not been vibrated or tamped down in that area to close up voids.

There was also a cavity, or a cave under my original slab under the service pipe and to the right of it. I could get my fingers into that space quite a ways, although it was only an inch or so high. I figured that while I was at it, I might as well plug this cavity up too. In fact, this would be a good place to start because it was more accessible and less critical than the cavity under the cleanout pipe. It would give me a little practice before I filled up the big cavity. I decided to do the work in several small batches of concrete.

I mixed the first batch and placed the wad of concrete in front of the ledge under the service pipe. Then with the small trowel, I squeezed the concrete back into the cavity and smoothed out the front side. It worked well.

Then I mixed the second batch and realized that I should have cleaned up my mixing box and my tools first. The concrete was already hardening on my hoe and in the mixing box. After placing the second wad in the spring, I cleaned up the tools. I had to scrape off some pretty firm concrete with the trowel in order to get it off. From then on, I cleaned the box and tools between each batch.

I squeezed two or three batches into the cavity under the cleanout pipe using the trowel to start with and my bare hands to finish up. I could feel where the lumps of concrete needed to be pushed into so I felt that I got a pretty good seal. It looked pretty good and I felt happy with the result when I finished. I probably didn't use much more than 10 lb. of hydraulic cement for the job. But I was glad I had quite a bit of extra cement just in case.

With the leak hopefully plugged, it was now time to put things back together. During the work I got a clear view of what things looked like and I could see that the concrete wall came out beyond the lip of the service pipe on one side so that the stainless steel strainer couldn't be placed flat against the mouth of the pipe. To fix this problem, I decided to turn the strainer around so that it bulged into the pipe rather than outward as before. Since the rim of the strainer is bigger than the pipe, that means that the mesh of the strainer came in contact with the pipe. That was good because the mesh could be deformed to fit the contour of the pipe and the concrete that was sticking out to make a tight seal. I just made a dent in the mesh that accommodated the concrete that was protruding.

To hold the strainer in place, I decided to use the same piece of conduit as before. But now that the handle of the strainer stuck out further, the conduit was a little too long. I took it back to the cabin and cut off an inch and a half and brought it back. It worked like a charm and it now holds the strainer snugly against the mouth of the pipe.

Next, I replaced the cleanout cap. This took a little doing because there is very little clearance around the threads of the pipe and there was a lot of sand and gravel in there that had to be removed. There was even a lump of concrete that I had to knock out of there using a hammer and my rebar chisel. I wondered if this was some of my hydraulic cement that had oozed through the leaks and into that space. I couldn't imagine that it was from the original concrete otherwise how could the cap have fit before? Anyway I was apprehensive about knocking concrete loose under the cleanout cap.

After screwing the cleanout cap back onto the pipe, the good news was that the water in the springbox began to rise. The bad news was that I could see water leaking out from around the cleanout pipe. It hadn't been sealed up completely.

The water kept rising though until it began to run out the overflow pipe. The flow wasn't much, but at least the water level was well above the service pipe so the springbox was back in operation providing me with water. If the leak doesn't get any worse, the springbox will work through the winter and maybe even for many more years. We'll be watching and we'll see.

Next I opened the supply valve and I could hear water rushing into the pipe. The flow of water out of the overflow pipe stopped immediately, but after several minutes, when the pipe filled back up with water, the flow resumed out the overflow.

I thought about mixing some more concrete and packing it around the cleanout pipe from the inside, but it was getting late, I was super tired, and the springbox was working the way it was now. I decided to close the lid and leave any more plugging for another day.

I replaced the springbox lid but left the derrick and rigging in place. I packed up all the tools in the wheelbarrow and brought them back to the cabin.

The water was flowing, but the pressure was down because of all the air in the pipes. I was super tired, so instead of trying to bleed the air out, I quit for the day and showered with low pressure. Instead of filling all the holes in the showerhead as usual, water came out only from 3/8 of the holes. It took me a little longer to shower, but it worked anyway. I went to bed very sore and tired that night.

About midnight, I heard a noise and got up to find one mouse in the trap behind the wood stove and another mouse evidently mortally wounded trying unsuccessfully to squirm his way across the floor. I threw both mice outside and reset the traps. The one in the entry room was sprung so I figured that must have been how the second mouse got injured. The rodent wars continue.

On Thursday morning, I took my trusty Trapper Nelson backpack up to the spring to retrieve the derrick rigging. I noticed that water was still running out the overflow pipe which was encouraging. I brought all the tools back along with a bucket full of wet sandbags which had formed the dam. When I got back, I emptied the sandbags out onto a big mortarboard that I placed under the front porch. Hopefully the sand will eventually dry out under there.

The water pressure in the cabin had increased overnight so that about 3/4 of the holes in the showerhead produced a stream. I decided against doing any work on bleeding air until the next visit, at which time it probably won't be necessary anyway.

Before I went home, I winterized the front porch water hose. I left for home at 1:30 feeling sort of good about my not-quite-perfect fix of the springbox leak.