WATER IS THE LIFEBLOOD . . .

For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. (Isaiah 44:3)

We discovered a natural spring feeding a cattle trough high up on the mountain. Too bad we don't have one of those on our lot.

Isaiah 44:3 is a verse I would like to claim both with regard to water on our dry land and the living water that God would pour on our offspring. From the moment we purchased this property, water has been on our minds. The problem of water has taxed and frustrated Rick’s thinking capacity and challenged Tim’s dream of growing grapes. So I thought I’d begin this blog with some perceptive thoughts and quotes about the absolute indispensability of water:

“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. – W.H. Auden ¹

“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” - Jacques Yves Cousteau ¹

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” - Loren Eiseley ¹

"Water is the lifeblood of our bodies, our economy, our nation and our well-being." - Stephen Johnson ²

In order for the original landowners to sub-divide their property, they had to build a road (which became Pincushion Trail) and they had to ensure that each lot had a viable source of water by drilling wells and testing the flow for each.  There is a deep aquifer under this land which they drilled in to and they did find water on each parcel. The individual wells they drilled ranged from essentially dry to gushers producing 20 gallons/minute. Two wells were dug on our property, one at the very bottom near the road and another 40 meters up. The well registry told us that the one at the bottom would give us enough water for domestic use, but before we closed the deal on the land, we took the precaution of bringing in a water technician to test the flow rate again. The bottom and best well tested at 1 gal/min and the one part way up the hill yielded .5 gal/min. Not the best news, but adequate for domestic use. I feel a quote from Benjamin Franklin applies here: “When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.”²

Our 1 gal/min well is the one we will be depending on to supply the magic liquid to both the cottage and the house. A 6-inch hole has been bored in rock, 340 feet deep, and a liner has been installed so it is ready for a pump. The other one is 540 feet deep and doesn’t have a liner, so we’ll leave that as is for now. To date, Rick has consulted with 3 different pump specialists to determine steps to get water from the well at the bottom of the hill to the cottage 130 meters up and eventually to the house another 40 m horizontally across the hill. The guys’ original plan to put a large cistern in the house basement and pump water directly from the well to the cistern to create a pressure system for the house seems to be sound. The cottage is a different story. In talking with water experts, three options have emerged:

1) put a small storage tank at the cottage and pump 130 m directly from the well;

2) put a storage tank in the power/pump shed which is part way up the hill and install a secondary pump in the shed;

3) put a 1700 gallon cistern in the ground at the power/pump shed with 2 additional pumps, one for the cottage and one for the house at a cost of $30,000.

Which option will work well, meet our needs, and not destroy our budget? Option 3 seems to be overkill (Rick calls it the Cadillac version) and is way beyond our budget. This plan came from a water company which would supply all the expertise, components, and labor needed, but the cost is prohibitive and it doesn’t even include laying pipe beyond the pump shed. However, Rick has found it difficult to get other consultants to create a system for us or to source a large enough pump ourselves. Our dear neighbor (from whom we bought the land) has lots of experience putting in pumps and systems and he has offered to help Rick install a 1.5 hp pump. He has even provided a list of components needed. This fits our DIY program here, but when Rick tried to order the supplies, the retailers can’t agree on what system is the right one and won’t sell him the components without an engineer’s approval. They seem to be concerned about the possibility of the pump running too much and burning out because of the slow recovery rate. We are still without a solution and have to put the problem on the back burner and think it through with Tim when we get back to Saskatchewan.

Down the road, it will be a whole new challenge to find a source of water for growing grapes. Rainfall here averages 135 mm annually (yes, less than Saskatchewan) and little blooms in the desert without irrigation. We can keep drilling wells in the hopes of tapping into the aquifer at a place where much more flow is available, but at a cost of about $25,000 a shot, it’s too much of a gamble when you don’t know if you’ll find anything. All this to say that in this “dry and thirsty land,” we have a new appreciation for the value of water (Ezekiel 19:13).

Without the actual pumps and cisterns, however, they can proceed with digging the trenches and laying the water and power lines in the ground, and that is what is happening this week (our last week here for the fall). What a process this has turned out to be – it looks like our lot has been bombed! 

Our new best friend, “Harris Hitache,” is back to dig 500 feet of 5-foot-deep trenches from the well at the bottom to the power/pump shed, then up to the road, through the road, and on to the cottage way up the hill. Since we are at the foot of a mountain, they can hit solid rock at any time, and they did - sooner than expected, not far from the well.

Harris had to bring in another big machine with a buddy, “Shearforce,” to jack hammer the rock into pieces. Thankfully, there was little rock after the shed.

After the trench is dug, they pour in a layer of sand to form a smooth bed for the lines to rest on. The water line goes in first. 

Rick's job was to lay out and connect the sections of water line, so he got to get deep and dirty in the trench. One of the days was really windy, so his clothes and every pore got caked with flour-fine dirt. Once the water line is in place, they pour another layer of sand on top to protect it from sharp rocks. Next, a layer of gravel goes over the sand before the power conduit gets laid down.

The power lines are hooked up to an impressive array of power boxes on the inside and outside walls of the shed.

When all the lines are in and protected, Harris will backfill all the trenches and smooth out the surface, but it will take a few seasons before the landscape looks natural again.

Water and power – two staples of modern life. No matter the difficulty or the cost, we’ve got to have access to those commodities. When you buy a house in the city or even an acreage where the utility services are already in place, you tend not to think of all the work that went into getting that lot ready to live on. We are now very aware of the process and unlikely to take it for granted in the future.

We left our BC property yesterday, trusting the excavation company to complete installation of the power lines, run power into the cottage, hook up the plumbing to the septic tank and construct the septic field. Rick completed installing the metal roof on the cottage so weather can't get in. We actually did accomplish what we had hoped to this fall. It all stands secure under the watch-keeping of God and our neighbours.

After a couple days in Calgary, we will return to Saskatchewan. Rick is happy to take a break from manual labour, but our team will have some thinking and planning to do in terms of securing materials and establishing a timeline for the next steps. Our hopes at this point are to return to Pincushion in February to get the cottage ready for us to move into. It will become our new home until the house is livable.

To be continued . . . Happy winter, everyone!

R & C

Quotes about water:

1 (https://blog.cwf-fcf.org/index.php/en/8-quotes-that-illustrate-why-water-is-life/)

2 (https://everydaypower.com/water-quotes/)