Checking Out Our Muddy Spring Water System

Friday January 24, 2020 Guerneville CA.

Started the day puttering

I wanted to get some work done on the van today but it was overcast and there was no sun on the van and I wasn’t feeling like it anyway.

Soon I’ll have to get with it as this month seems to be going fast and I want to travel soon so I need to get with it fixing things up.

Planted raspberries

So instead I planted these few raspberry plants left over from yesterday’s transplanting.

 

I planted them along here by the creek just for snacking on when I walk by.

 

Mulching the raspberry plants

After a break I loaded the wheelbarrow at the woodchip pile several times.

 

And moved the woodchips across the yard to the raspberry patch and dumped it around the vines. I have a bunch more to do but a little at a time is the way it will get done.

 

Spring is coming

While doing that I noticed these daffodil plants are getting ready to bloom and you know what that means. Spring is on the way.

 

Muddy springs

My brother Tom was complaining about our spring water being muddy and it hadn’t rained that hard to cause that so I needed to check out our springs to see what was going on.

Dirt bike ride

That meant a dirt bike ride up into the hills to check out the spring system.

I fired the bike up and rode on up to this part by the water tanks where some water valves are located and walked up into that little draw.

 

Testing

I have two spring lines coming together and going into the water tank line so I could test which line was muddy which I did. The line with clay in it wasn’t the one I expected so something was going on alright. It turned out to be the main spring line so  I needed to go up the hill an check out that spring.

The water valves where I did some testing.

 

So I headed back down to the bike and rode on up the hill.

 

I took this rode up to the main spring area.

 

Main spring area

The main spring is up this draw so I walked up to have a look. I found a side spring that comes out of some ferns running full bore and muddy so I took it out of the system which I had thought I already had done but I didn’t.

 

Having thought I fixed up the water I rode on up the hill heading for the ridge top overlook.

 

Ridge top overlook

I made it to the overlook area which looks down on the town of Guerneville.

 

Guerneville

Here’s Guerneville with a lot of water haze coming off the forest.

 

More testing

I rode back down to the water valves to test to see if I’d taken the bad water out of the system.

 

Main spring is went dry

When I checked the main line water there was no muddy water and in fact there was no water at all on that line. Good thing I have another line with water. So now what. There’s no water from our main spring we call Indian spring because they used to use it.

Checking it out

I rode back up the hill to check the main spring to see if any water was coming out of the hill. The main spring comes out of the hill in these trees.

 

I pulled the pipe off and it was dry as a bone. No water which is the first time this happened in years and it never happened before. But after the neighbor logged his place a couple few years ago it’s been doing some strange things like the water moving to another spot.

It looks like our main spring is coming out another spot close by where all the clay is getting into the system. It’s running full bore with clay which should cleanup in time as it runs so maybe our main spring has changed and  maybe it might change back. What ever I hope the water keeps coming out somewhere so we can use it.

Right now it just looks like the spring changed exit holes and is still usable once the water runs for awhile and the clay cleans out of it.

Nothing I can do so I walked on down through here back to the dirt bike.

 

I rode down to this spot an checked some more springs out which were doing ok.

 

Nice ride

I rode on home and put the dirt bike away. Nice ride.

I let the chickens out into the front yard late in the day. There’s some over by the carrot patch, fenced out of course.

 

Nice day

Any day I can get some work done and get some exercise and have some fun is a nice day and today was just that. :O)