Well, the day has finally come to install the water tanks. It was put of for several weeks because they Dave from Rural Tanks in Seymour got a very bas case of flu that took him out for more than a week.
Di’s father Sam offered to help, so I arrived at his house at 7am this morning and we trundled up to Trentham. Dave arrived at about 9:30am with his truck and two huge tanks.
There was no way he was game to drive onto the block, for fear of getting bogged, so he parked at the front, and we rolled the tanks off the truck and up to the back of the block. This actually proved much easier than I expected. Luckily for us, a perfectly flat block worked in our favour. Each tank weight about 300kgs, but they are easy to roll.
We laid out the melthoid on the concrete slabs to stop condensation seeping up through the concrete and rusting the tanks, then we simply rolled the tanks up to the slabs and tipped them over. Very easy when you have someone who has done it hundreds of times (Dave).
All in all it went very easily. The two tanks only took about an hour and a half to install.
When we were rolling them along, one of the lids poped out of its seam for about 1200mm. Dave said this is normal, and he just used a few tools to pop it back in and crimp up the seam.
At about 12:30, a water tank arrived to pump in 16000 litres of water. Again, he didnt drive onto the block, but I had forwarned him to bring 60m of hose. No probs. He just pumped from the start of the block. 8000 litres into each tank.
Dave said that a gal tank will last muck longer if it is full with water. So we need to get some more delivered. The whole reason for getting the tanks now is so that we can fill the ponds. We cant put the pond liner in without water – as you spread out the liner, you need water to hold it in place so you can stretch out all the wrinkles.
The water delivery costs $200 per truck.