Up On Sunbeam Falls

    We get our water directly from Sunbeam Creek.  We have a 4 foot (1.27 m) culvert sitting upright in the middle of Sunbeam Falls to collect the water, which then runs 4,100 ft (1.2 km) to my house.  During the spring all of the snow on the mountain tops begins to melt increasing the volume of water thundering down the falls in strength and volume.  The current picks up and carries a lot of rock and gravel down the falls also.

    We have a heavy duty gravel screen which we put over our culvert to prevent the culvert from filling up with rock, but a lot of the finer pieces get through and can clog up the fine screen we have over our water intake.  Yesterday our water pressure was beginning to go down so we went up to replace our water intake.

    It is very dangerous work.  The falls is something like 355 ft (77m) in elevation and our culvert is about halfway down the falls.  The photo doesn’t show the hundred foot drop below our culvert.  Like I said it is dangerous work.

    The photo shows Glen, my neighbor in blue, standing on top of the gravel screen which covers our culvert, scraping off the rocks stuck on the screen.  You can see the orangish-brown top of the board at Glen’s feet.  We pull that up which opens a hole in the bottom of the culvert, causing the water in the culvert to pour out, carrying out a lot of the gravel that made it into the culvert.

    We were able to change our intake screen, so hopefully we won’t have to mess with our water  system for a while.

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