You know what happens when a 90-pound stucco bag breaks in half in the back of your Jeep? I salvaged as much as I could, but I’ve still got a black-and-white dog where once he was all black. If my brain had been working I’d have probably swept out the back before I loaded him. But it’s not.
We didn’t quite finish the first coat because we ran out of stucco. Landlady, who must be at least as tired as me, is now on her way to the big town about 50 miles away to buy more. I, on the other hand, get to collapse in a nice comfy chair. Alas I can’t bathe first, because I still don’t have any water. Not even enough trickle from the cistern to fill the toilet.
Somebody on the previous post asked if the damage was freeze-related. No, it’s just an object lesson that if you plan to bury water line under many tons of dirt you should either make absolutely sure there are no rocks in it (impossible) or use rigid pipe. Ian’s water has been turned off since long before winter, so we only now learned of the damage.
But why I still don’t have any water at the Lair, after more than a day of full sun to run the pump, I really don’t know. It’s frustrating, but you have to be ready for this sort of thing when you build all your own infrastructure without really knowing what you’re doing.
A civil engineer friend of mine said that they use pea gravel around large pipes to ensure that there are no “point loads” that will dent, bend, break, buckle or otherwise wreck the pipe. It gets squished from all around at the same time, instead of crushed between two rocks when the large equipment drives over it.
Maybe for a smaller pipe, sand is called for??? I would ask the experts for advice, and tolerate their laughter at my ignorance and misfortune.
If you care to browse them many of the model building codes have been liberated and posted at https://public.resource.org/. There is a lot of accumulated wisdom in building codes but unfortunately they are not footnoted to document where the purely political/profiteering/self-interest content is located. They are dry reading but one can glen a lot of prescribed building methods from them with careful study.