Water Me

It all started about 7 years ago, when an acquaintance of mine wanted to build a pole barn. We jumped through all the hoops and did all the things needed to erect the pole barn, poured the floor, wired the building with lights and plugs, and we installed a wood stove to heat it. After a year of The Long Winter in Michigan the wood stove did its job but created moisture on the metal roof and it dripped water as the stove was Heating. At this time, he decided to insulate the barn. We placed insulation in the walls and on the ceilings, we then put a vapor barrier between the insulation in the interior of the building and plywood to cover it all that did the trick. As years went on, he added other things, shelves, a car lift, and a makeshift pisser. Somehow, we got ahold of an old urinal like what you have seen in the school single wall-mounted porcelain urinal.

At first, we just mounted it on the wall and ran a drainpipe just to run it outside onto the ground. As we learned later this was not the best idea as for his dogs tended to lap up the access pee.

We opted to place the drain underground where we live it is a sandy soil low-lying swampy area. We bought 40 ft of drain field tile and ran at parallel in the barn on one side. This worked for some time. As the years passed, the urinal became more restricted and started to protrude the smell that would knock you on your ass when you walk through the door. So, he decided one of the ways to fix it was to run water through the system when you’re done urinating. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to put a well in. If anyone has installed a well recently you know it can cost up to tens of thousands of dollars. Since our water table in the area is so shallow, we decided to try to place a well in the ground by hand AKA shallow well style. The local store (Tractor Supply) had everything in stock that we needed with the exception of the pounder. We borrowed one of those from a close friend. The pounder was a little different than what I was used to being on the farm. This it has a big stem sticking off the bottom of it about 4 ft that goes inside the pipe attached to the top of that is an 80lb weight with two handles used to drive the pipe down. FYI not the easiest thing to do. I am attaching some pictures to show you the different stages at which we worked. It took five guys in 1 hour to push the pipe down 18 ft. 

Once we check the pipe for water, we found that it was within six feet of the surface inside of the pipe which means we had 12ft for the water standing inside of the pipe which is great for volume. All that was left was to clean the pipe out and test the water we installed an old hand pump on top priming was as easy as to just start pumping. He purchased a small well pump and bladder tank to install inside the bathroom.

From there we plumbed everything in the pex. He installed a sink at the outside of the room ran through water to the urinal.

He placed an on-demand hot water system against the wall and ran the hot side to the sink.

He also installed to bibs for the hose one inside the garage and one outside the garage. Next to the door outside of the bathroom. He also installed an automatic watering dish for the dogs.

So, in the beginning I told you everything we did which included pouring the concrete for the floor. The first task which was one of the hardest tasks of this whole project was to bore a hole in an 8” thick concrete floor. What I want you to take away from this rant is this when performing projects try to think into the future, you might need is a hole in the floor for example. So someday, even you can put in a well or perhaps even run additional wires for some type of conduit to the barn. In hindsight, this probably would have saved us somewhere around 2 hours of work and two days of aches and pains in the long run. Thanks for listening to the hillbilly rant.