Last week, I decided to tackle what should have been a simple job, repairing a pin-prick water leak in a rural pipe near a trough.
It sounded straightforward enough. Most of the water pipes on my farm are either one inch or three-quarter inch.
Generally, a line feeding a trough would be three quarters, so I threw a couple of joiners into the Ute, two three quarter-inch fittings and, for good
measure, a one-inch joiner as well (Trip One).
After digging around in the mud for 10 minutes, I finally located the pipe. What the heck, it was a half inch. So, it was back to the farm for a half inch joiner (Trip Two).
Arriving back at the paddock, I discovered my new joiner was not nearly as old as the poly pipe, which I believe is about 40 years old, so it was too big. I cut a section out and headed to Balaklava for a more appropriate fitting (Trip Three).
After visiting two retailers, I finally found a fitting that should work, although it would need heat to install. So, I stopped in at home, boiled some water, filled several thermos containers, and headed back to the paddock (Trip Four).
It turns out that pouring boiling water into a muddy hole with water still dripping through the pipe does not work very well. I rang Sharmans to ask if there was such a thing as a DeWalt battery-operated heat gun.
There is. So, I headed to Sharmans and purchased one (Trip Five).
Back to the paddock (Trip Six), the heat gun did the job, but by then I had cut too much pipe and needed to remove more and add an extra joiner. I connected everything up and switched the mains back on.
It was leaking. It turned out I still had not cut enough out.
I disconnected one end, cut out more pipe, reconnected it … and, finally, it worked.
Total time involved: six hours.
Total kilometres travelled: 150.
All that for what started as a “30-minute job”.
