Rain, again

1. Rain, again. 

After an extremely dry winter and spring. Hm.

And they were right.

2. Roof

Despite all the work on the roof, we still have leaks. Well, that is no surprise really, the rain was extreme, and the roof is not yet finished. Only the ends of the roof tiles are now mortared, the sides still need their Lanko treatment.

Still, a little disappointing. Not much water, just a few drops, but irritating all the same, as the sound of a drop of water on a wooden floor is like a smack on the head, at night, when you are sleeping. And there were about 15 locations with a small leak.

3. Road

The canals work. But, with lots of water coming from the field at the back, the gravel fills especially the middle canal, and it ceases to function, and the water simply flows over.  

The big flow of water stems from the field behind us, right behind that white electricity pylon. It then flows onto our road, filling up the canal you can see below. After that the water simply flows over, damaging the road, again. The solution will be to block that flow of water. There already is a canal dug there, by us, but the water flows too quickly to be contained. It needs a row of those concrete blocks to contain it. We will order a pallet of those and lay them in a row, right next to our road.

So, here we go again: repairs. 

Luckily our neighbour makes roads, he made this one, and he came with a machine the afternoon of the day after. No need to add extra sand or gravel, there still was enough material. That machine is great! They use it in one direction to collect material, then reverse it to spread it. Clever.

The concrete of the canal was broken by the machine.  They said that is was because the machine is really heavy, but engineer Jansen thinks they simply hooked the concrete.  we re-inserted the bits, with some wire mesh in between, and a rather liquid mix of cement and sand to fill the gaps.

We put a reflector triangle at the entrance gate, to keep people out while the road was unusable. That did not stop the damn arrogant kutneighbours down the road. They arrived in their car, got out, put the triangle and block of stone to the side, went back in their car, continued, saw they could not continue, got out and walked. 

4. Water tunnel

Water in front of the garage, again. This time engineer Jansen noticed that there is a plastic tube in the wall that expels water from the tunnel. At midnight he thought of this, and got out of bed: the water is now caught in this contraption, the grey plastic pipes and white blocks, and directed to the irrigation channel, away from the garage:

This pipe in the wall was always there, but in the past expelled its water into the irrigation channel that we severed and redirected to build the ramp to access the garage.  Never noticed it before!

The ad hoc construction is now permanent:

The stones around the white plastic pipe were rather loose, took them out, re-inserted them with some sand:lime:cement:water 2:1:1:1 mixture. 

5. Septic overflow (no pictures)

Well, last time we had very substantial rain we noticed a slow rising of the water in the downstairs loo. We attributed that to the soil becoming saturated with water, and thus raising the water level in the main septic tank, resulting in that rising water level in the downstairs loo. 

But, engineer Jansen was never really satisfied with that reasoning, noticing that the water canal behind our house was full of water. The overflow of our septic system exits into that canal via a buried pipe. But, if the canal is full of water the situation might be reversed, and the overflow might become an inflow.

So, when we noticed the water level rising again, but now very quickly after the onset of the rain the theory of waterlogged soil was abandoned, and the overflow pipe became the suspect again. While rain was gushing we removed the septic's lid, and yes, there was the water flowing in.  Used a bit of sponge in a plastic bag to block it, as a temporary measure.

The previous time we prevented trouble using our Gardena pump to pump out water, and lower the water level. That did not work this time, as there was some dirt in the pump, and it refused to work. Used a siphon as an alternative. Still, a bit of smelly water ended up on our kitchen floor. The engineers had a busy evening. 

(In Waar is de kak? // Where is the poo? you can read more juicy story on the septic tank(s). ) 

6. Gravel

The gravel in the orchard was inundated too. We are extremely lucky and happy that the water flowing actually was clean, and left no muddy residue. So, no tiresome cleanup there!