Tether yourself with a rappelling rig? Wear cleats? Stake a ladder to the slope and use its rungs as steps? ;-)
Good Luck! Rich
There are some nasties on that slope, such as agave plant. Kind of a huge flat cactus with impressive stingers. You don't ever want to fall into one of those.
Anyhow, it's repaired. Except for a very slow drip at those darned PVC threads. I hate these "modern" methods such as teflon tape. It's just not as good as the old hemp and pipe dope but you supposedly can't use it on PVC for whatever reason. If that drip doesn't stop I have to cut it all out and do it all over again. But at least I made myself a new crawl entry. Much easier now.
Of course Murphy struck. A client called while I was under there.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
I have some potted agave started from seeds which I am foolishly attempting to make bloom here in zone 5. Those spikes are amazingly sharp, the slightest touch and you are punctured!
There is a lot of seriously defective teflon tape being sold in places like the Home Despot and Lowes these days. IME any teflon tape made in China is unusable, it simply shreds when you attempt to apply it properly stretched so that it fully conforms to the threads. If you have this sort of tape, toss it in the trash. For best results use the thick yellow teflon tape made for gas lines (or at least good quality non-chinese tape), three wraps starting one thread back with each turn back from the end a bit more, stretching just enough that the tape fully conforms to the threads before assembly, all the way to the bottom of the vee, otherwise it will tear on assembly and leak. Any tape past the crest of the end thread is likely to come off in the pipe and wind up in a valve orifice, so don't do that.
Also any threaded plastic to metal connection must be made with the male thread plastic and the female thread metal, putting the plastic under compression rather than tension, for long term reliability.
Most likely small particles of crud in your water will eventually plug your tiny leak so you can save this tip for the next repair.
We actually rip the volunteers out as soon as we see any. We don't want more agave. A real mess is when they bloom which is also end-of-life for that particular plant. I had a 25ft shoot in front of the office. Amazing. Made a huge honey-like goo that dripped all around it. Which, of course, attracted ants and others. Then it dried out and we had to fell it. I had no choice but to lay it into the pool because anywhere else it would have crushed stuff. Yuck.
Mine is mil-spec stuff but white and thin. If the leak won't stop I'll maybe try the yellow version. I wonder if there is thicker pipe dope that is ok for PVC. That's what was on there before. Or maybe just regular stuff which valve and PVC mfgs say is off-limits but which held up just fine for 35 years and never leaked. The old valve wasn't screwed in hard, I could untwirl it by hand. Of course, first I had to disassemble it because the dudes who installed it made sure it was so close to a beam that it's head would lock it. They must have assembled it all on the ground and then pulled up the whole works.
That is my hope. I love problems that go away on their own :-)
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
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