My son and I got the conduit drained and the draw string installed yesterday - and just in time, too, since the sun was setting and I wouldn't have put the shop vac away if the project were continuing. Later last night and continuing today, we had unexpected and torrential downpours along with thunder that would make your teeth hurt. (Apologies to those of you who no longer have teeth.) Surprisingly, my demented dog who is afraid of his own shadow has no fear of even the loudest thunder.
Once we were pretty sure we had the swamp water out of the conduit, we flushed it with fresh water in case mice or dirt were still plugging it up. When it looked good and clean I suggested my boy take a sip but he's no dummy and he made me go first.
The plan was to tie kite string to some wadded up plastic and use the shop vac to suck that down the pipe. Once we got it through, we'd use it to pull some far stronger, much heavier nylon cord through.
We drained the pipe again, then tried the string. Then we tried it again and again and, ultimately, many more times. Each time, it felt like it was going about 50 feet at a good clip before ceasing to pull as hard, though all of the available string would still go in. When the attempt failed and I pulled the string out, I consistently found it wadded and knotted about 50 feet in. That's apparently where the payload was sticking, and the rest of the string was just piling up on it and making things difficult. %@#$!
After my wife had already called us in for dinner, my son suggested we try one more time with only the heavier cord. Since we had good suction, I agreed. I tied the end into a knot about two thirds of an inch across and fed it in. It went pretty well but I didn't hear anything from my son so I assumed it had failed. I began pulling it back and found HUGE resistance - like someone on the other end was pulling on the line. I yelled to my son to turn off the shop vac, figuring that the line had caught on a major obstruction, but he almost immediately hollered that we had string. The resistance I'd felt was the knot in the crinkled tube of the shop vac.
It was a good way to end the day, even though I went inside to shower off and found I a dog tick biting my leg. It's my second bite and the third tick overall for me this year. (One hadn't yet bitten.) My son had a bite this year as well, and he's not spending a tenth the time I do outdoors each day.
Today we made a fresh appointment with the internet company. Fortunately, they're expediting it. In theory, next Tuesday at this time I'll be on-line . . . but most folks around here tell me that the bandwidth and reliability I should expect are not good. Terrible in fact. In any case, I have many more things to do than I used to and the internet usage is not high on my list (though that may change during the long, cold winter.)
Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months
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