It’s OK, I’m married to an engineer

My engineering marvel to manage the mud run off perplexed my well man a bit; apparently he was planning on letting the water run off then shovel the mud up into piles to be manually disposed of later (once dried a bit). He was going to wheelbarrow the mud down across the alley a bit and dump it into the tangled vine covered fill area at the back of the commercial lot next to me. A noble gesture for sure and probably a plan that could be executed without a hitch.

But as nasty and unkempt as the section is, it isn’t my property to dump on and the landscapers working on the commercial lot next to it had just dumped all sorts of holly bush parts there. Even though the owner wouldn’t notice even if he looked at the property every day (my guess he hasn’t ever looked at it), I didn’t want to potentially complicate things so I waved him off.

My scheme allowed the mud to skim and spread itself out down a long channel down to a settling pool in the lower back corner of the yard. I figured I would allow it to do this and then shovel the mulch back over it once it had dried and settled a bit. Assuming we hit water soon, there is going to be a lot of bailing that will dump thousands of gallons of water into the slough as the well is finished up. The settling area will catch the last of the finest clay particles and allow the water to seep out and be absorbed without staining everything in sight.

So here is the site this evening after another day of drilling and a nice thunderstorm. Note the grey rock residue accumulating; we are into solid rock now and today punched through a very hard layer into a more fractured layer. (We like the deep cracks- it is how water seeps into a well.)

So how well did the mud disperse and distribute itself in this very tight space today? Not bad-

The settling pool is at the end of the run and was much more full before the rain came. No mess escaped and the water didn’t overflow into the alley, my neighbor’s property or any of my garden beds.

Am I qualified to design and build this sort of marvel in a single evening? No worries.

I’m married to an engineer.