First Alajandro F. and Now the Bio-falls

I guess the title of this post is not accurate cuz Alajandro hasn't been around long enough to unpack his bags and the bio-falls has been here for over 5 years. In any case, they do have something in common. It's "drip... drip... drip..."

Of course this isn't a prostate problem as everyone knows that bio-falls, like hoses, don't have prostates. What the bio-falls has is a leak! This isn't just a run of the mill leak one might find in the bathroom sink... this leak is invisible and camouflaged. A navy seal or an army delta-force commando couldn't be better camouflaged than my bio-fall leak. 

This leak was, in my opinion, one of the worst kind to have. It dripped about 4 or 5 drops a second from 3 locations and all this was taking place behind rocks over a gravel bed, thus there was no tale-tale sign of water. 3X4 drops per second equates to around 1,036,800 drip drops per day (I can't make up my mind if they are drips or drops). There are about 15,400 drops in a gallon of water. Do the math and you have a leak that has wasted a bunch of water over the past 5 years.

So how did you come to find this gusher incognito, he asked?

Now that was a very, very astute question if I do say so myself. The answer, as most of the things I write about, isn't one of those pithy types of answers. Here goes:

I bought a new spitter. 

Having a new spitter requires one to plumb pressurized water to the spitter to enable the spitter to spit.  The closest pressurized water to the location of the spitter was the bio-falls.

It was a simple task to dig down to the water pipe that runs between the bio-falls and the pump, tap into the PVC pipe and run a hose from the tap to the spitter.

I did just that.  I dug down exposing the 2 inch pipe, cut it in half and glued in the "T" splice.  I then realized in order to get the pipe into the top of the "T" I would have to lift it up about 2 inches.  That wasn't a big deal I thought, so I removed a couple of flat stones that were hiding the pipe, lifted it and smeared on the glue and popped it into the "T"... easy. 

Then I noticed one of the stones was loose.  I wiggled it like a kid with a loose tooth and it fell onto the ground and then the stones above it fell onto the ground and then I saw the water dripping.  My immediate reaction was to dismiss the possibility of a leak and reasoned (rationalized) the water was from the recent rain.

Bio-falls viewed from the back.  Showing sight of the cave-in and special
rock to stop the dreaded flood of over 1 million drops of water/day.

I went to lunch.

After lunch I brought the boss out to take a look at my discovery.  Her message was short and to the point.  She said, "Humph, it's a leak," and left me to figure out the rest.

The first thing I did was stop the water from leaking.  To that end you will notice a stone stuck into the right corner of the bio-falls.  It's purpose is to hold the liner in an upright position and thus not allow the water to drip over the edge.  I'm of the opinion that the bio-falls has settled a bit in this corner allowing the water to rise too close to the edge.

Having to admit that it was in fact a leak I then felt it was just prudent to remove some more stones from around the top of the bio-falls to insure there were no other surprises. Of course there were no other leaks but if I hadn't checked you can bet there would have been.  Grok?

I've found in my travels, my trials and tribulations, many of my life experiences that it's a lot easier to take things apart than to put them together.  I am now left with the task of re-camouflaging the bio-falls.  Armed with yucky pucky, gloves and the frontier spirit I will persevere and make things one again... even better than original!  You can take that to the bank.

I'll report the outcome of this project in future posts.