Gamone spring

[This article, intended for a small subset of my readers, concerns a technical problem at Gamone.]

In my article of 23 October 2009 entitled Waiting for water [display], I described the overflow pipe I had attached to my spring, up above the house at Gamone. As I said, I would have to wait until there was a sufficient quantity of water in the pool before knowing whether or not the installation was totally successful.

Well, a week or so ago, after all the snow on the slopes above Gamone had finally melted, I was able to get a clear picture of the situation. Water has continued to flow nonstop through the overflow hole:

And it emerges from the red tube as a strong and steady stream:

However, an equally strong and steady stream flows along the U-shaped steel gutter that crosses the road:

Clearly, the diameter of the overflow hole is not nearly large enough to empty out all the water that is backed up in the pool, seen here:

The following photo shows both the surface of the pool and the start of the red tube that takes water away from the overflow hole:

The pool and the red tube are separated by a dam wall, a meter high, made out of thick limestone blocks. The rectangular steel lid can be lifted to provide access to the overflow pipe. As you can gather from these two views of the pool, a huge mass of water needs to be evacuated. And some of this water is seeping out over the upper edges of the pool and giving rise to the stream that crosses the road.

Solution? Next summer, when the pool is once again almost dry, I'll have to widen considerably the diameter of the overflow hole in the limestone wall, so that a greater volume of water flows into the red tube. To do this, I'll need to rent a powerful electric jackhammer of the following kind:

Since the drilling will be horizontal, I'll need to rig up some kind of overhead support with a chain capable of bearing the weight of the jackhammer. I can sense already that this is going to be a heavyweight task, but it's the only way of solving the problem.

Waiting for water

Every afternoon last week, I was up at my spring installing the new overflow pipe... with an iPhone in my coat pocket in case I needed to phone somebody to inform them of an accident. Here are the elements of the installation at the level of the ceramic-lined outlet hole in the ancient stone receptacle at the lower end of the pool.

For the moment, there's very little water in the catchment area that I've been calling a "pool". Think of it rather as a virtual pool. But there has been a lot of rain on the surrounding slopes over the last few days, and the spring will surely come back to life in the near future. Meanwhile, here's the big ugly tube (temporary installation) that will normally lead the water down towards the house.

I wander up there several times a day, with Sophia, to see if any water has arrived. For the moment, there's no more than a trickle emerging from the lower extremity of the tube. For my work to be a success, there are two requirements:

1. Water has to flow abundantly from the red tube.

2. There must be practically no overflow from this steel gutter that crosses the road at the level of the spring:

So, I'm waiting for the water. If all goes well, I'll finally call upon a guy with a mini-excavator to dig a trench on the edge of the road down to the house, and I'll install a line of PVC tubes.