Plans for today (2026)

I hit the range again after work today.
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The plans for today did not include running out of water. Oops
It appears that someone has damaged a pipe on the farm, and the base of the full water tank is soaked. The water tank that we are currently connected to is empty. The full one can't be used because when we tried to transfer to it, its pipe is broken in 2 places (this is not the usual case) and is not getting to the house - my landlord has since dug the pipe up and confirmed it is broken in 2 separate places.

There is a really weird system for water here, which no one is really sure what is what, but it worked until today (and has done so since the '60s). But basically, the smaller tank farther from the house (tank 1) has better water pressure because it is higher up the hill. It is also somehow connected to the larger concrete tank by the shearing shed (tank 2), which has a much larger collection roof... and that is the tank standing in the wet.

What we know is that when both tanks are turned on at their stop taps, they backfill each other to some extent emptying the smaller one into the larger one - so we usually only ever have 1 tank turned on at once. And now the tank that we usually use (tank 1) is empty, and the bottom of the tank 2 which is not in use, is standing in water and it has not rained for months.... and that pipe is broken, so we can't actually use that water anyway....

Our landlord has said he can put 2,000L into the empty tank tomorrow morning. But I have had to say no, because I know it is just going to empty itself via the broken pipe at the outlet of the full tank.

It is hard to explain, but when we started to dig up the pipe where it went into the ground for tank 2, it was leading away from the house and away from tank 1, which is what it is supposedly connected to (and I know that it is connected to it because you can refill tank 2 from tank 1)! The red line is the broken pipe.... leading away from the house - somehow the water from tank 1 (top right) is emptying via the broken pipe at tank 2... so it is currently anyone's guess as to where the actual pipes are. I understand how the water is emptying (it is flowing in the reserve direction back to the base of tank 2), but the actual location of the pipes themselves is best described as confusing. So my landlord will get a plumber out here tomorrow morning to find and trace the pipes once and for all. The height difference between the tanks and the house is about 10m... just to make life fun, my landlord asked me where tap 3 was! I didn't know we had a 3rd tap on the system! I know there is a star picket painted white that everyone has assumed is a marker for a pipe, but there is no tap there and to make life more fun, there are ground rocks there (as in no soil, where the rocks are not resting on soil - hope that makes sense)....

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So tomorrow we may finally find out where the pipes are. watch this space!
 
Based on having multiple breaks and that no one has a firm handle on where the pipes run, it sounds like those pipes are old and have reached the end of their useful life. The best approach would be for your landlord to replace all of the plumbing between the tanks and the house, especially in light of the dry area you're in and how critical water is. I say that as a landlord of several properties, myself.

I also know how bad it sucks to not have water. We had a frozen pipe burst on Christmas morning some years back and I had to shut off water to the entire house, since there wasn't another valve to isolate the break. It had to remain off for days because we couldn't get a plumber out over the holidays. Fortunately, we keep plenty of bottled water on hand for drinking, and I keep two 55-gallon drums of water in the basement, so we still had water to drink and enough water that we were able to bring water up in buckets to take sponge baths, flush toilets, and clean dishes. It was not a fun circumstance.
 
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