Water Issues at Kelley's Brown Swiss Dairy
This morning when I went to milk I had little water pressure and it took me longer than usual to run my water to sanitize the lines before milking. I thought maybe the cows were drinking from the waterer as sometimes that causes a drop in pressure so i went on to gather them up. Back in the barn now I still had very little pressure so I thought that there was a hydrant on or a toilet not functioning properly somewhere on the water system. I continued milking as it was dark and it would do me any good to start searching at that time. I got done with the milking and started the clean up process but still didnt have the water pressure I needed. I went ahead and fed the young stock their morning grain in the dark and went and fed the three bottles to the bottle calves. Then I started searching while Glinda and "Flossie" finished cleaning the barn. I heard water runing from a dead end line that is under some old concrete on the north dside of Mitzi's house and knew right away what had happened. It had frozen during all the cold weather and then it finally thawed out last night the water started flowing out. I went to the shop and grabbed some big mauls and commenced to busting the concrete out. The time was seven a. m. and barely light when I started hammering at the concrete. I quickly found out that the concrete was 10-11 inches think and extremely hard to bust but I kept at it. Glinda and "Flossie" came on out after they were finished and watched. Mitzi and "Lil" got up and went to a window to watch. Brandan came out about the time I had it busted back far enough and gave me a hand. The ice had split an elbow about one foot back under the concrete but we finally had it found. Brandan went and shut the water off and Glinda headed after pipe wrenches. It was a simple matter of removing the pipe back to the elbow and then taking the cap off the end of that piece. Glinda hunted up the teflon tape we use for joining pipe joints and I placed the old cap on the end of the pipe. Brandan went and turned the water back on and there was no leak. Yippee. It was now nine a. m. and I was tired. We headed to the house to rest and check messages. The photos below help tell the tale.
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I thought I would add this short video also.
Cheerily
IJK
Cheerily
IJK
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