No Dr. Nefario, you’re not going to win.
Stupid physics…
It’s one of those facts that water freezes when the temperature drops below that magic number. It’s 32° Fahrenheit, or 0° Celsius, and bloody frustrating when it happens to do it in your waterlines! Not to mention damaging as it expands in the pipes and causes them to break.
Now, I’m not a total idiot, most of the time anyway, and I know that burying the pipes will prevent this, but when it’s an emergency situation where it’s impossible to get them under the dirt, you just live with it.
In the fall of 2022, we had what they call an “Atmospheric River” event that washed away a lot of micro-hydro systems all over Southwestern BC. I was very fortunate in that I had a kind of “circuit breaker” since I was peeling my water off of another creek to feed my penstock. And when the big woosh happened, it blew the main creek out and left mine intact. Except for one little problem. The place where I was taking my water from was now about 30ft. lower, leaving my little crik high and dry. (Fun fact, micro-hydro doesn’t work without water) In short, I was screwed. Winter was only days away and without water to the genny or the house was not a good scene.
There was only one thing to do, rebuild the creek, or in this case, make a new one.
The little mountain stream was now 30 ft lower and it looked like I was screwed. And the place where I was standing slid into the creek a few seconds after I took this picture!
Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned living up here it’s that God always makes a way. And this time was no exception. About 200ft. down the creek, the creek washed down to bedrock, and amazingly there was a bit of level ground that could possibly lead to my side of the ravine. Just maybe there was a way.
My renter just happened to be there the weekend of the big washouts and he was stuck up there too. So, I wasn’t all alone in this, and it turned out to be a good thing because between the two of us we found a way to divert some of the water back to the house. All it would take is a lot of hard work! Digging by hand, and building a new creek from scratch.
Digging through one of three ridges to get the water back to the house side…
Building the new weir from whatever we could find…
After three weeks of hard work, the first water started to flow…
We did it!
And the next day, it froze…
So, the next tree weeks were spent trying to thaw the pipes. Oh joy…..
We did eventually get it all going again, but what a lot of work it was. Pipes froze and cracked and it was a constant battle to keep it flowing by piling snow on the pipes to give them a little bit of insulation from the wind at -20°. But after we’d been there for almost three months, it was time to go. My renter needed to get back to work and so did I. We did have the luxury of my snowmobile to get to where the biggest washout was, so we took it the 4kms down what was left of the road and headed back to civilization.