I mentioned this earlier this fall. The plan was to add on water storage in our Mesa Pasture. I wasn’t there for the cleanout of the intake next to the creek, but that was done. The water is pumped up out of the canyon to these tanks. There used to be three tanks, but two were torn out and we replaced only one.
There is now a new waterline that will fill the second tank, fill a metal storage tank, and fill another water trough down the hill. The second line goes from this square tank to probably almost a mile away to another tank down in a rocky draw.
Halfway on that second pipeline is where the big white tank is now installed.
Water can bypass the big white tank or fill it, whichever we desire. We set it to fill and Vernon guesses that it will take 18 hours to fill. If we want, once the big white tank is full, we can fill another new trough just below it. The guys are preparing the cement and infill for that shiny new tank…
Once that’s full, it can overflow into a pond we built. The pond, hopefully, will also catch some spring runoff.
Vernon covers the plastic liner with a layer of dirt, and then drives over it to pack it down. The pond is the weakest part of the link. We will find out in the spring snow melt if it holds, then we will keep some water in it and not let it dry out.
If the pond is successful, we might put in a few other ponds to catch snow melt runoff. Every little bit helps when you live in a desert!
Find me here!
I think I see a Prairie Dog in the background ~ supervising! 🙂
This is an interesting account of how you lift and store water for your mesa pasture and downhill tank. Good luck with the pond, it’s definitely an innovation worth trying in these droughty times. Here in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in northern CA, it’s gotten hotter and drier, so we’re trying small basic check dams in shallow draws where we’re trying to revegetate. Living in a desert, or even a semi-arid place that’s drying out, it’s impossible to overstate the importance of keeping the water in place, rather than letting it run off.
That all looks like too much fun! Here in So Cal we turn the tap and water comes out, but we have to conserve because most of that water comes from the northern half of the state.
Looking good
and I have it so easy, turn on the faucet and all the water I need, That’s quite a project your working on, just wondering, the black plastic pipe is really buried shallow, no chance of it freezing, or do you drain it in the winter, here the frost sometimes goes down several feet , In a bad winter, maybe 4-5 feet, Then we have water line breaks, or I should say, the water dept. has line breaks, The joys of retirement!
We don’t use this pasture in the winter, so freezing is not a problem.