It’s magic.

It pumps water up to 200 metres above itself without electricity.

Video Glockemann pump

It uses the energy of flowing water to pump the water.

I’ve stood in a very slow flowing creek at the bottom of a valley and seen it pump water up 65 metres to a rain tank at the top of the hill. It doesn’t pump fast but continuously.

Wonderful design, wonderful ‘eyes’ in the designer for the gifts Earth has for us if we will look for them.

Don’t you love good design?

Enjoy,

M

M

This is a simple, easy-to-do way of getting water to your garden when a masonry or other hard surface is between your garden and your source of water.

We might sum up this method as, “digging with water”.

What’s not discussed here are safety issues which you’ll need to also resolve such as:  are there any electrical, gas or other services where you wish to put your drain?

It’s useful for pipes between 30 to 100 mm diameter.

You’ll need:

• polypipe or other piping to suit the amount of water and the length you wish to drive your tunnel.  For a typical household downpipe, for example, where the downpipe is about 70 to 90 mm, you’ll need the same or similar diameter pipe and the bits to join the pipe to the downpipe;
• if the length of the path is more than a metre you may need several lengths of pipe and bits to join the pipe as it’s fed below the path and across to the other side of it;
• a hose with good water pressure – mains water at least ie 120 kpa; the hose will need to be at least half as smaller in diameter than the pipe as the hose must fit inside the pipe and the remaining space must allow for soil to escape backwards past the hose.
• a shovel and pick

Step 1:  dig the hole beside the starting point for your tunnel – allow about 150 depth below the base of the slab or path and make the hole about 1.00 diameter – it will have to hold removed soil and allow you to dig that removed soil out as you go further under the path

Step 2: dig a hole on the other side where you wish the new pipe to end up, about 300 wide and about 150 deeper than the underside of the slab below the path or paved area

Step 3: put the pipe to go under the path against the soil below the path

Step 4: put the hose into the pipe and turn on the water

Step 5: as the hose washes away the soil and it spills back into the hole remove the soil and place it on a pile for reuse in your garden

Step 6: continue to water pressure away the soil and gradually move the pipe further into the soil until it reaches the waiting hole on the other side of the path slab

Possible other step: if your pipe needs to be joined you’ll need to join it then extend the pipe under the path and continue your ‘water drilling’.

Go you good tunneller. Go, too, the garden to be watered with your rainwater that’s fallen on a roof nearby . . . yes?

M

Note: my thanks to Tim of ecoburbia whose ideas this was.

www.bing.com…

Wow; how good is that!

Thanks, Emma.

May the little critters be with you,

M

youtu.be/SHkMh8wwlXY…

Thank you, Mikey – you’re terrific and so’s your vid.

Join with us to make the Plan happen and watch the vid and go to the link there . ..

M

Sydney Water's bright idea - tap water

Sydney Water, the government owned business monopoly, has had a bright idea.

They’ve begun to provide empty, stylish glass bottles to cafes to serve tap water in.

The label on the bottle says, “Tap – a Sydney Water product”.

This is clever and will, I guess, re-position tap water in the minds of those eating out.  The bottle is solid and stylish.  The label is clear.  It will, I hope, make food eaters begin to question whether they need to buy bottled water which causes so much energy and water pollution or get pretty much the same water at a thousandth of the price – a cent or two if you cost the mains tap water compared to the several dollars for companies selling bottled water.

My guess is if Sydney Water had not been a government business and so slow to act this might have happened years ago and perhaps millions of bottles would have been kept out of our waterways and so many more fish would not have been killed by the tiny shards of plastic which bottled water bottles become when thrown away.

Still, a bright idea and a really positive action.

Just the same, I’ll stick with my bottled rainwater from my rain tank – I call it, “Chippo Champagne”.

May the plastic bottles not be with you,

M

A flooded street

For some reading about recent thinking about how our climate is changing, this is a useful article:

www.economist.com…

The photo above is from that article.

It shows an unsustainable street, and it seems how we live here in Chippo, and Australia generally, is partly the reason there are streets like those.  Hopefully, the work being done to trial sustainable streets in Chippendale will reduce the number of unsustainable streets elsewhere.

www.thefifthestate.com…

Time to turn off the coal, methinks,

Michael

“ Okay, It was in the 1960s, the exact year I can’t remember, but it must have been before 1967.

His name was Mr. Thomas.  He was into transport. Can’t remember his first name.   The hole that had been dug where he was going to put the building was straight sided, and very deep.  I asked him why it was so deep.

He said that he wanted seven level car park under the proposed building.

When I worked for Jack Lang, he told me about Hyde Park before it became a park, it was actually a swamp.

I remembered my mother telling me about how silly the white people were in filling in the swamp that used to feed the Sydney people with eels, and that it was good water, which was still under the Park.  She said that they wouldn’t be able to build anything on it which was why it was now a park.  She said that the eels came down the Tank Stream, and the other small stream that now goes through the Botanic Gardens every year after the Flying Foxes gathered.

I worked out that if it was a swamp the guy was going to have a lot of trouble if he went down too deep, particularly if the water was still stored in the porous rock where he was going to dig.

So I told him that I would bet him that the hole would fill up with water.

He asked how much I was willing to bet, and I said $5,000 (with my fingers crossed).  He took the bet.

It poured rain shortly after that and the hole filled up.   He honoured his bet, and I used the money to pay my university fees for my graduate degree in geomorphology.”

Thank you, Fran.  I’m honoured to walk with elders, such as you, who tell me their stories.

Pine Lane water main floods

From the mountains to Chippo to the sea

Water bypassing trees, verge

It was a strange sight in this early morning to see a torrent of water from a burst water main in Pine Lane.

So much water wasted.

If all the water that falls in our streets in a year were to fall in a couple of days this is how that water would look.

The photos demonstrate how water is denied to trees, verge gardens and anything planted above the level of the gutter.

On this hot day is was strange to see so much water being denied to the nearby trees; it just looks wrong, aside from the waste itself.

Still, this is nothing on the floods we got out at Forbes from the Lachlan.  Imagine being kept on your farm for 3 months because the flood waters kept you there and getting your food in sugar bags dropped from Gypsy Moth planes.  Now there’s a lot of fun.

May the floods be with our trees . . . one day soon,

Michael