Repairs at the Reservoir - September 28/11

Many of you will know that we've had a water leak at the reservoir for some time now. On Wednesday, a small crew of volunteers fixed the leak and cleaned the reservoir.

There have been several reasons why we've put up with this leak for as long as we did. Among them was the difficulty in figuring out where the leak was coming from. At first, we thought it was a leaky drain valve. Then we became convinced that the overflow system was leaking, possibly through a crack in a corroded cast iron pipe.

Then there was the difficulty in finding the right materials to make the repairs, once again not being absolutely sure where the leak was coming from. Obviously, we weren't able to drain the reservoir every time we wanted just to have a look, so we had to prepare for whatever we might find.

In the end, we made a custom 6-inch plug for the drain hole (shown in the bottom picture) and had materials on hand to fix any leak in the overflow pipe, should we find such a hole when we drained the reservoir.

I can report that the leak was from the main reservoir drain valve and that the custom plug fixed the problem, as well as a good tightening of the valve. The repair crew also cleaned up the overflow pipe and wrapped it with materials that should help protect it. The cleaning should last us a couple of years so this is certainly one job we are happy to have completed.

Thanks to the repair/cleaning crew of Gerda, Jason, Hugh, Dave and Effie, and to Doug for his help earlier in the morning when we were testing the drain plug.

This project will pretty much bring to an end the maintenance season for this year. All of the really important jobs were completed with a few things left over for next year. Thanks to those who helped on the projects we did do this season and to those on water teams, the volunteers who take water samples and test for chlorine and generally help keep the system running.