The Zeiger Family Homestead Blog

Last autumn I went up to the creek to remove the diversion hose from the catchment bucket, stopping our summer water tank from filling. As I always do when I go up there, I pressed my lips to the plastic pipe and blew into it. This clears accumulated silt and any other blockage from the intake end of the pipe.

A proper level of flow from the intake, next to the catchment bucket (Photo: Michelle L. Zeiger).

On this occasion, I couldn’t blow out the obstruction. I nearly gave myself an embolism trying to clear the pipe! From that moment, we knew that before we collected water from the creek the next spring, we’d need to excavate the intake and clear the obstruction, and possibly make repairs or improvements.

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