[AT] Hey Ralph!

Sun Nov 22 07:50:43 PST 2015

They replaced the water main into a great uncle's house in San Diego while
I was there in 1959. They said that they only buried them a couple of
inches to keep people from hitting them with the mower.  :-)
On the other hand their water was so acidic that they had to replace them
pretty often due to them getting eaten up from the inside. I think the one
they replaced was about 8 years old.
I had to bypass and abandon some lines here on the farm. Only lasted about
60 years... Here in Central Indiana they require 30" depth on a house
foundation. Water is pretty safe at that depth too but in long runs of well
below zero weather the Indianapolis Water Company has had pipes freeze at
4' depth. I found long ago that on short hand dug runs to stock water
fountains etc. the pipe wouldn't freeze at about 18" during several days of
20 below temps if I laid a strip of 1" foam board about 10" wide right on
top of the pipe before back-filling. Even as the frost line moves down the
heat in the Earth keeps moving up. If you can stop the cold going down and
the heat coming up on the  top of the pipe it works very well. Of course it
also helped I'm sure that they drank pretty regular and the water didn't
sit in the pipe not moving for days.
Putting that cheap foam board in the ditch was a whole lot easier than hand
digging the pipe in deeper.

On Sun, Nov 22, 2015 at 8:36 AM, charlie hill <charliehill at embarqmail.com>
wrote:

> Dean,  I've seen the welder type pipe thawing done many times in industrial
> plants.
> As long as the pipe is steel or some other metal all you do is hook the
> ground to
> one end of the pipe and the stinger to the other end of the pipe and crank
> the
> welder up.  The resistance in the pipe causes it to warm up just like the
> elements
> in you electric heater, just not that hot.
>
> Charlie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dean VP
> Sent: Saturday, November 21, 2015 8:25 PM
> To: 'Antique tractor email discussion group'
> Subject: Re: [AT] Hey Ralph!
>
> As I recall in the 1940's and  1950's  the frost line in NW IA was several
> feet deep. The last winter
> we spent in IA we had 26 days in a row where it never got above zero with
> typical night time
> temperatures in the -40 range.  How deep the frost line went was very
> dependent on how deep the snow
> was on the ground as it acted as an insulator of sorts.  We usually had
> around 400 head of feeder
> cattle  as well as Milk Cows on the yard 24/7/365. So had to have a ready
> supply of water.  The well
> that fed the farm was across a gravel road and maybe 200 to 300 feet from
> where the cattle tank as. I
> distinctly recall that supply pipe freezing up a few times and it was
> buried
> several feet deep.  I
> don't remember now how deep but I want to say at least 6'.   No water was a
> disaster with that much
> livestock in the yard. So Dad would hire a local mobile welder to thaw out
> the pipes.  It isn't clear
> any more to me how that all worked but it did and we had water again.  It
> was very common to thaw
> things with baling wire and a cob that had been soaked in Kerosene. I don't
> recall the little propane
> torches being available then.  Just the Kerosene blow torch and soldering
> irons. Man I'm really old
> that is almost 65 years ago. And yes we had running water and indoor toiles
> after 1948 and even had
> cars and tractors that ran on gas.
> .
>
>
> Dean VP
> Snohomish, WA
>
> If we can employ guards with guns to protect money, we can and should
> employ
> guards with guns to
> protect people. Bernard Goldberg.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
> [mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of
> charlie hill
> Sent: Saturday, November 21, 2015 5:30 AM
> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
> Subject: Re: [AT] Hey Ralph!
>
> The frost line here is published at 8" but I don' remember the ground
> freezing that
> deep since I was a boy, more than half a century ago.
>
> Charlie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: jtchall at nc.rr.com
> Sent: Friday, November 20, 2015 6:04 PM
> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
> Subject: Re: [AT] Hey Ralph!
>
> Rare for the ground to freeze real deep here. Often times it will over
> night, but thaw on top by mid-morning. I guess the fields were fairly flat
> or he would have had trouble with the picker dog-tracking?
>
> John
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Don
> Sent: Friday, November 20, 2015 9:57 AM
> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
> Subject: Re: [AT] Hey Ralph!
>
> On 11/20/2015 8:18 AM, charlie hill wrote:
> > Ralph,  is there any chance that just after the freeze up you can get in
> > the field and harvest it before it gets snow covered?
>
> Sometime in the mid 50s we had a very wet fall so could not get in to
> pick the corn.  This was before combine shellers, we used a two row
> picker and stored corn in a crib.   My uncle made skids out of old dozer
> blades and when the ground froze enough we used his D4 to pull the corn
> picker.  It was not many years later we bought a picker sheller.
>
> A huge corn crib we built was still standing when we visited the farm
> last summer.
>
> --
> Don Bowen       --AD0NB--
>
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>
> _______________________________________________
> AT mailing list
> http://www.antique-tractor.com/mailman/listinfo/at
>

-- 
-- 

Francis Robinson
aka "farmer"
Central Indiana USA
robinson46176 at gmail.com