The Pipe Project

It has been very rainy this year here in western Jamaica - 17.5" of rain since we arrived on November 8 - and as a result our road in to the property has been very muddy and impassable to vehicles much of the time. We really would like to make the road more stable, and part of that project involves getting the water off of the road. Looking at the situation, we determined that installing a culvert would help. We had two sections of very heavy concrete pipe that we acquired years ago, but of course the pipe was nowhere near where we needed it - about 900' according to Google Earth. So we made a couple of phone calls and at 8:30am a crew of nine friends showed up and we were off and running.

My calculations put the weight of the pipe at around 900 pounds, so we decided that sliding the pipe with the assistance of rollers cut from a log looked like the best bet. Maybe some rope would help!

OK, time to get this monster moving.

Around the tower and through the fence to the road we go.

Looking good so far. Now it's a pretty straight shot up the road for a ways.

Hauling through the muddy part. You can't see it in this picture, but when we hit the mud the rollers just sank in and the pipe wouldn't move. So we got some long 2x4's and laid rails for the rollers to run on. That worked and we were on our way again.

Once the pipe was moving we tried hard to keep it moving, so we'd grab the rollers as they came off the back and run them to the front. Sometimes we actually got them there in time!

Whew! We got the pipe to where it needed to be, and finished digging out the trench.

Almost ready to roll the pipe in. Tom inspects the progress.

OK, let's get this in!

Watch your feet! Watch your feet!

And with a thump it was in.

A bit of shovel work and we were done by 10:30am. Great work by all!