Well so far it's been an eventful June. No progress on the porch because our septic drain field decided to finally call it quits. We want to see how much that will run us before spending any more money on other projects. I've spent the last two weeks trying to get a few quotes from contractors and that's been a process on its own. To the point, I'm grateful I'm at least capable of doing most of the things around the house.
In the interest of not spending money, we decided to finally clean up some dead fall and brush in part of our shelter belt. We had a derecho go through a few years ago and it toppled some trees, and the drought the last few years has started to hurt some of the older trees. I've been trying to figure out what I want to do with it. The west side is older and very overgrown and that's where we are losing most of the trees. The North side was planted in the 80's I believe, so it's still fairly healthy. We discovered most of the brush is Buckthorn, an invasive that is able to choke out a lot of native trees. It's also somewhat of a pain to kill. So that's something we can work on once it's a little later in the summer. I'm hoping if we get rid of that a lot of the native trees will be able to start to fill in the empty space.
Not the best picture, but the only before I could find.
It's been a pretty dry spring here and our water bill shows it. We have a windmill and well on the property that I've always wanted to see if I could get going. It hasn't been used since the 70's so we really weren't sure what to expect from the well. I figured now's a good time to see what we can do with it. I quickly realized the sucker rod was completely froze up and I would have to pull the pump to figure anything out. I asked one of the plumbers that came out that also works on wells if he could pull it and work on it for me. He said it'd have to be pulled with a well truck, and by the time I paid him it wouldn't be worth it since we're already on rural water. So that just made me more determined to do it myself. I didn't have much to lose since it currently doesn't work.
I built a 4 pronged brace that sits in the windmill. I attached a ****** block on the bottom of that. I then backed my truck up to the windmill and used a 12v winch in the receiver to actually pull the pipe. It actually worked really well. The hardest part was separating the pipe sections as I pulled them, and I chose to do it on the hottest day we've had. The well ended up being 180' deep, and I hit water around 80'. However my dreams of this being a low buck project quickly faded once I started researching new pumps. My options are basically replace it with the same pump jack system, which I'm still waiting to hear back for quotes on the sucker rod, pipe, and pump; or use a jet pump, which some quick napkin math would be $2,000 - $2,500 for that. So the jury's still out on what I want to do.
This was the setup. I'll grab a photo of the brace once I pull it down from the windmill. It was 100 degrees out and I wasn't thinking about photos.
In the interest of not spending money, we decided to finally clean up some dead fall and brush in part of our shelter belt. We had a derecho go through a few years ago and it toppled some trees, and the drought the last few years has started to hurt some of the older trees. I've been trying to figure out what I want to do with it. The west side is older and very overgrown and that's where we are losing most of the trees. The North side was planted in the 80's I believe, so it's still fairly healthy. We discovered most of the brush is Buckthorn, an invasive that is able to choke out a lot of native trees. It's also somewhat of a pain to kill. So that's something we can work on once it's a little later in the summer. I'm hoping if we get rid of that a lot of the native trees will be able to start to fill in the empty space.
Not the best picture, but the only before I could find.
It's been a pretty dry spring here and our water bill shows it. We have a windmill and well on the property that I've always wanted to see if I could get going. It hasn't been used since the 70's so we really weren't sure what to expect from the well. I figured now's a good time to see what we can do with it. I quickly realized the sucker rod was completely froze up and I would have to pull the pump to figure anything out. I asked one of the plumbers that came out that also works on wells if he could pull it and work on it for me. He said it'd have to be pulled with a well truck, and by the time I paid him it wouldn't be worth it since we're already on rural water. So that just made me more determined to do it myself. I didn't have much to lose since it currently doesn't work.
I built a 4 pronged brace that sits in the windmill. I attached a ****** block on the bottom of that. I then backed my truck up to the windmill and used a 12v winch in the receiver to actually pull the pipe. It actually worked really well. The hardest part was separating the pipe sections as I pulled them, and I chose to do it on the hottest day we've had. The well ended up being 180' deep, and I hit water around 80'. However my dreams of this being a low buck project quickly faded once I started researching new pumps. My options are basically replace it with the same pump jack system, which I'm still waiting to hear back for quotes on the sucker rod, pipe, and pump; or use a jet pump, which some quick napkin math would be $2,000 - $2,500 for that. So the jury's still out on what I want to do.
This was the setup. I'll grab a photo of the brace once I pull it down from the windmill. It was 100 degrees out and I wasn't thinking about photos.
