Work on the cistern

Currently, we are connected to city water, but that’s something that we want to change. It’s been our plan for quite some time, but the municipal water has been convenient. There is a shallow well down the hill on which I have a hand pump and have used for watering livestock. There’s also a spring that flows about 9 months of the year. We also have the pond now. So, there are alternative water sources available.

We also want to cistern rain water that we can catch off of our house roof. In September of 2008, I decided to start constructing a cistern inside the shed portion of our garage. The garage is a pole building that has an original area of about 24 feet by 40 feet. The previous owner built the garage and also added some space on one side that is about 12 feet by 40 feet. We used this shed portion as a goat/chicken barn for a few years. With gutters we should be able to harvest quite a bit of water off of the roof. Additionally, locating a cistern here would allow us to let gravity provide water pressure to our new house, because there is about a 50 to 60 foot elevation change between the two.

It is inside the shed that I began the construction of a ferro-cement cistern. The basic idea for ferro-cement construction is to build a metal framework that provides strength and structure. This framework is then plastered with a cement-sand mixture that makes it so it will hold water.

The first thing to do was to provide a level space for building the cistern. I used hand tools: a shovel and a grub hoe mainly. I hauled the material that I dug out outside and dumped it on the hill behind the garage.

The next order of business was to begin building the metal framework. This consists of welded wire (re-mesh) and reinforcement bars (re-bar) that are wired together. Essentially, you create a sandwich with the re-mesh on either side of the re-bar all rigidly tied together. Here are two photos of the work I completed in September 2008:



Sadly, after getting started on the framework, I did not get back to the construction of the cistern until Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. We decided about two weeks ago that we should go ahead and get the cistern constructed and start using it sooner rather than later. So, I enlisted the help of a good friend who came over this week to help me.

The first day we worked on finishing the metal framework for the floor. We had to add another layer of re-mesh and a layer of chicken wire on top. Wiring all the layers together takes time and quite a bit of wire. The end result is a framework that is strongly joined together and that will make for a strong cistern. The different layers are offset from one another so that the spaces between the wires and re-bar become smaller and smaller.

The following two photos show the floor ready for to be poured:



We finished the framework on Tuesday after a full day of work. On Wednesday we began with the concrete. I bought an electric concrete mixer for this project and later projects, including plastering the straw bales on our new house this summer. I already had sand and bags of cement that I had bought in 2008 for the cistern project. The sand was fine, but the cement had absorbed some humidity.

We carried the concrete mix into the shed in buckets and used trowels to force it into the framework. We had to build it up at the edges to the point that the walls would later extend from. I also put in a drain line and an outlet pipe. It took a full day, but we got the concrete finished for the floor (sorry about the dust spots on the camera lens).

At this point in time, I’m not sure that the concrete is going to set up hard enough. I think the cement didn’t work properly, probably from having absorbed moisture during the last year and a half. At first, it seemed like we had nothing more than wet sand, but it is hardening somewhat. I just don’t know if I will be able to trust it for completing the cistern. The dimensions I designed for the cistern would provide about 5,000 gallons of water storage. That’s a lot of weight and pressure.

Our current thinking while we wait on the floor to cure completely, is that we may put in two 2,000 gallon poly water tanks. They will sit on this floor with no problem. I can add some wire around them which will attach to the stub wall that is already framed. Then, inside this wire, I can insulate around the poly tanks with sawdust or some other material. We are not sure yet which way we will proceed. The poly tanks would cost a bit more, but they would save a lot of time and labor. We’ll decide for sure in the coming days.

Our new pond (part 2)

After the contractor left, I spent some time working on building a dock. I also used the grader blade on my tractor to take a little soil off of the shallow end. When I checked the water line on the shallow end of the pond, I realized I hadn't paid enough attention during construction. The slope and depth on a couple of the edges for several feet were not what I wanted. Just looking at it, I didn't realize how shallow the water would be along the edge of the pond.

In the following photo you can see the shallow end and the beginning of my dock construction. At the edge of the smoothed area, the bottom drops down several feet. I'm placing the dock between the deep end of the pond and the shallow end. I thought this would be an ideal location. The four posts that are set in the photo are 6x6 eastern red cedar I milled. The foreground in the photo is the shallow end of the pond after I scraped it with the grader blade. I was only able to take off a few inches of soil – not enough to make an appreciable difference, though.



The next photo looks the other direction across the shallow end. The line I cut with the blade (on the right) denotes the approximate water level. As you can see, it was going to be quite shallow.



Here’s a view of the dock construction after I set all of the posts:





The photo above shows the dock posts and the first water in the pond.

In order to deepen the pond on the shallow end, I borrowed a friend’s backhoe again. I am deeply grateful to Mike for letting me use his machine so much.



As I removed dirt with the backhoe, I put it i the back of my 1979 F250 and moved it to the slope in front of our new house.



The photo above shows the dump bed in action, a feature that makes this truck very handy. I can load up to 2 tons of material in it. That only takes 6 or 7 shovels full of dirt with the backhoe.



The photo above shows how much dirt I moved in the first afternoon and put in front of the house. It was a good opportunity to accomplish two things: deepen the shallow end of the pond and feather out the slope in front of the house.



This is a view of what I was able to get done in the first afternoon with the backhoe. I dug it down about 2.5 feet. At this point I still needed to extend the excavation out toward the middle, of course. I left a ridge under the dock dividing the deep end from the shallow end in the hope that the fish will like it that way.



This view shows the pool of water from the rain we received earlier that week. You can also see that although I got down to clay in one part of this excavation (the reddish/orange colored dirt), I was still digging out top soil. I didn’t remove all of it. I did end up digging deeper and removing a bit of the clay, though. More about that later. . .

Chucky’s Pond

Using a single wire connected to a solar fence charger, I’ve fenced a corridor from the barn to the alfalfa field. Josey spent two weeks in the field which I previously fenced with a single electric wire. Josey and Tilly are now together, and they seem to get along fine. They’re grazing the corridor. In a few days, I’ll fence another paddock for them in what has until this point been a hay field. I’ll still cut and bale hay on it because it’s bigger than they can keep up with, but they will have plenty of green grass to eat as I rotate them through the field.

I fenced another area for Chucky. I’d love to let him be with the others, but even though he’s a year old, he thinks he needs to still nurse. Josey is enough of a doting momma that she’ll let him, too. She wants to baby him. So, they’ll be kept separate. They can see each other and sniff noses over the electric fence, though.

In the paddock Chucky’s in, I dug a small pond before I put him in it. Later this summer, I’d like to have the whole area made into a pond. I’ll move Chucky before then, of course. For now, I wanted to provide a drinking hole for him, and I wanted to see if there was clay under the topsoil. I dug down only about four feet, and there is clay. It’s not red like the clay near our house site, but it’s clay. That’s good. Clay will help the big pond hold water when we have it made.

I dug Chucky’s pond the day after we had a fair bit of rain overnight. It only took about 15-20 minutes to dig using the borrowed backhoe that’s been here for about three weeks. In about three hours, the hole was full of water. We’ll see how it does as far as holding water is concerned. Right now, we’ve had plenty of rain and more forecast for later in the week. The real test is for when things get a bit drier, whenever that will be (we’ve had rain nearly every day for a week and a half).

A hole full of water

I want to move Josey and Chucky Joe (the cows) out on grass on an area away from the barn. It’s easy enough to make paddocks for them with electric fence. Neither one of them wants to mess with an electric fence wire. There is one difficulty with moving them any distance from the barn: water. They both appreciate being able to drink during the day and night. Near the barn I have a hand pump on a shallow well from which I carry buckets of water to them. There is no readily available and easily accessible water near the area I want to pasture them. I do not desire to carry 20 gallons of water in five-gallon buckets 1,200 feet from the pump every day. So, what to do?

One idea I had was to try driving a well point somewhere in the vicinity. So, yesterday afternoon I drove the backhoe I’ve borrowed for working on the root cellar on the new house down near the pasturing area in order to dig down a ways before trying to drive the well point. I dug down about seven feet but had to stop at that depth. I hit solid rock. I didn’t fill the hole back in because there was water running into it about three feet down. Of course, we just received rain the last couple of days and it’s spring, so the ground is kind of wet.

This morning I checked on the hole. There was six feet of water in it. It would be nice if I could count on four or five feet of water in it during the course of the year, but I would be surprised if that would be the case. During the summer when the rains are less frequent, I expect the water level to drop significantly, leaving an empty, dry hole.

This evening I scooped out most of the water with the backhoe to see if the hole will fill up again tonight. There was water running back into it before I left. But, the ground is still wet, so I don’t know if any of this will really tell me anything. I expect I’ll be filling it back in soon.

I would like to solve the problem about how to easily water my animals in that location. I’ll keep pondering. For this summer, I’ll probably end up hauling water in a 325 gallon tote. Hopefully, I can harvest water off of the barn roof rather than use chlorinated water from the tap.