Spring / Summer April 2018 and onwards deployment(s)

[Penri]

I have every confidence you'll do a good job.

I only said what I did because any water captured is only any good to us if we can get it joined up to our existing plumbing, having to redo it with stage butts full of water would be impossible.

By the way did you replace the lids on the barrels?


Hwyl

Penri

[hamishmb]

Thanks

I didn't think you said anything objectionable, makes perfect sense

I did - in case they get full of leaves, seeing as the lids were.

Hamish

[Penri]

Hamish

I've laid out the parts we discussed, for coupling the blue and white piping, on the shelf above the plumbing parts sacks in the poly tunnel.

I also filled Terry and Stuart in on the plan for coupling the new butts into the existing plumbing.

I have found a source for the green netting that we've been using as a filters at the top of the barrels, I'll get hold of it and bring in when I get back.


Hwyl

Penri

[hamishmb]

Okay, sounds good.

I came in this afternoon to clean the river, which was fairly horrible, but it has collected lots of water, so that's good

I was going to take some more readings, but the router won't let me connect to the pis. I saw water get pumped to the butts, so I know they're still running though. Oh well, I'll just do it next time I bring the laptop in so I can ethernet in. On that note, thanks Terry for tucking the cable safely inside the green box.

Hamish

[TerryJC]

Hamish and I worked on the pipework behind the Wendy House this morning and completed most of the requested work, plus one other item. The picture below shows how far we got:

Stage_Railway_Plumbing.jpg (337.66 KiB) Viewed 1259 times

As you can see, we included the pipe from the Railway Room Butts because it seemed the right thing to do and because the two big blue pipes exert a lot of strain on the white plumbing, so we need to get the angles right. The big ground spike and concrete block are in an attempt to ensure that we eventually do glue everything, the parts mate together without a tendency to pop apart. We may have to make the arrangement permanent.

As stated, nothing is glued yet, but the screwed components have plumbers mate in the threads. The long white pipe adjacent to the Y-Piece is to represent the location of the Stage Butts Gate Valve. If need be, it can all be torn down and reassembled in a different configuration.

[Penri]

Looks good, we’ll done!

[hamishmb]

Note:

I intend to come back in later in the week to download readings and check how the river is doing.

We did run without mains water after the rain, but the butts are now depleted, so there are more leaks to fix. I'd like to have another stab at the one by the sump, and I'll look at the known leaky section to try to fix it somepoint soon

[hamishmb]

Hi all,

I came in during the torrential rain this morning to see how the gutters were doing and patch the river up. I brought the laptop, but due to the rain couldn't take the readings.

The gutters are mostly okay, except that:

• The gutter that leads to the river near the bog garden isn't really adding much water (needs investigation).
• The gutter behind the railway room leaks a lot, and creates a huge puddle.
• There is no endpiece/terminator on the gutter by the new butts, so the water can flow right out of the end over our heads.

I patched the river by the sump again to try and fix the problem, and patched the leaky section of river where there was a potential leak. I don't know if either of these things worked, but we'll see on Tuesday / if I come in on Saturday or something.

I added these jobs to the list as well.

[Penri]

Hello

I have managed to resolve a couple of the issues we saw on Tuesday:

• The fit of the gate valve and 40mm pipe; sorted by using a Floplast 40mm straight coupler which has an interference fit with the bore of the valve. The Floplast coupler are thicker than the Osma coupler, which you saw on Tuesday, so their o/d is larger but i/d identical.

• Interface between 40mm rigid and 40mm flex pipe; achieved using a couple of hose tails I found in my pond plumbing box and sourcing a couple of 40mm male end irons (couplers with a 1.5" BSP screw thread).

Six of the gate value / straight coupler combination have been glues up ready for use.

I also toyed with a slightly different physical layout for the pump assembly, see photo. This layout has slightly less parts and may have advantages in clearing obstruction, should any get in. Up for discussion. Whatever final configuration we go with we should really have demountable connectors on the I/Os so we can rod it out or remove it as necessary.

A final thought for you, I don't have a final design for the mechanicals for the gate valve / linear actuator mount yet and would rather not put the gate values into the system until I have it sorted. The valve and actuator have to be rigidly mounted in a fixed relationship plus be reasonably easy to take apart.

On Tuesday we can connect the new barrels into the existing system with a temporary bridging pipe between the demountable connectors mentioned above, then swap that out when the valves are sorted.

Hwyl

Penri

[Penri]

... oh and I also laid and levelled another slab to give us a little more room, should we need it. It's along the fence line so doesn't encroach into the walkway.