Gravity-Feed Waterline, Part 5: Placing the Culvert in the Falls

    The photo shows our waterline culvert as finished.  The board is raised to allow water to flow out of the watergate at the base of the culvert, when we need to drain it.

When our 4 foot long, 50 inch diameter galvanized culvert that was going to sit on Sunbeam Falls to collect the water for our waterline was delivered to us by the hardware store, it still had some work that needed to be done on it.  The designated level spot on the Falls where we planned to put the culvert, was beside a rock over which the water flowed.  That rock sloped outward at the bottom, so in order to have the culvert sit flush against the rock, we had to remove a bit of the base of the upright culvert.

Fortunately, my neighbor James knew how to use a cutting torch, and was able to cut away part of the culvert so it would fit tightly against the rock.  He also had to cut out a rectangular hole on the base of the culvert to create an opening for a watergate which we could open, when we needed to drain water from the culvert.

Once those changes had been made, we still had to get the culvert up to the falls.  We used a pickup to haul the culvert up to the switchback, then with some difficulty, two of us had to roll and maneuver the bulky galvanized culvert through the sloped wooded area from the switchback to Sunbeam Creek Falls, without having it roll down the steep slope.  Once we got it beside the falls, we cleared the big rocks from the culvert’s resting spot, put it into place, then re-stacked the rocks against it, to hold it in place.

Not only did our waterline require a lot of physical work, but also a tremendous amount of planning.  One night I woke up at 2:00 and could not fall back to sleep, because of all the thinking I began doing about the next obstacle in building our waterline.   That big obstacle which we had to confront was getting our waterline to cross under the road to the opposite side, where all of our houses were located.

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