12 April 2003 Trench Images

12 April 2003:  Click on a thumbnail for a full size version.  These are relatively high resolution images, file sizes as shown, in no particular order, except that the last item is a big mpeg movie.  You'd have to be the most desperately bored individual in the Cosmos to have any interest in watching a movie of a ditch, so I'm evidently engaged in an effort to demonstrate that commodity technology has reached such a level that even the most hideously mundane things in life can now be recorded and globally published in excruciating detail by ordinary country hicks like me...

Here's a description of the work so far: I dug a two foot deep trench from the electric meter base to a roughly five foot deep post hole, which I dug just beneath the water service port on the left side of the aircraft, just below the leading edge of the wing.  The trench intersects the old underground water line and water well's power cable that used to serve the mobile home (which used to be located roughly underneath the aircraft's current position).  I also acquired water pipe, 4" and smaller schedule 80 gray PVC electrical conduit, and other plumbing components.

I'll attempt to nondestructively pull the power cable from the remaining roughly 15 foot length of the old trench by simply pulling it out while the ground is quite wet.  Otherwise I'll have to dig most of it out.  Then I'll reroute it into the new trench and connect it to the electric meter base - I think there's enough length to do that.

Regarding the water line, I'll tap into the existing pipe with a new line, leaving the old remaining length intact and connected, for later use as an outdoor ground level water service port.  The new tap line will route to a ground service box with gate valves, then, below ground level, enter a hole in a vertical stanchion consisting of two gray PVC conduits (one inside the other, and both schedule 80, for strength) which will be set in the post hole.  The water line will then route vertically inside the stanchion to it's top, where it will exit through a weather head, connecting to the water service port through a flexible line so the aircraft can bob up and down on it's struts without damaging the line.  The standard Boeing water connector will be used, so no modification of the aircraft's hardware will be involved.  The water line will be insulated from the base of the stanchion up to and then over the Boeing connector with the usual polymer foam.

I'll place a few other items in the trench from the meter base to the water service stanchion, including telecom cable, general purpose electrical signal wire (probably 16 lines), and a pair of 4" black flexible drain pipes with internal pull ropes, which are cheap and will provide and easy way to route cable or flexible conduit through the trench at a later date, long after backfilling (local codes permitting).  I don't have immediate plans for these extra items, but the materials are inexpensive enough that I think it wise to place them in the trench for possible future use.  I may also place electrical power service cable in the trench if it's not too expensive - it might turn out that I'll want to route electrical power via this trench and a tandem stanchion.  I'm still thinking about that...  (The external power connector is under the cockpit, just forward of the forward sewage dump port.  But for domestic purposes, it's not the ideal power distribution starting point, especially since the heat pump will be in the climate control bay [the snake pit], and the domestic water heater either there or in the rear cargo hold.  But the tradeoffs aren't simple...)

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616.5KB	471.2KB	mpg movie, 15.5MB

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