Springs

[Graye]

No chance to go up there today so it's a first thing in the morning job tomorrow.

If it's NOT a pipe for the spring water then I am completely flummoxed. The black piping IS very rigid but it only seems to be used for the last twenty metres of the length (some point after I see the green one coming into the garden and disappearing underground, then re-appearing much nearer the house where the same black one has been cut, along with the green one. We are completely surrounded by fields on three sides and a river on the fourth. The only inhabitants of the fields are sheep. There are ore on the other side of the river too. The house DID have oil heating but the above-ground tank has been removed and I can see the white plastic oil pipe still in situ (admittedly near where the green/black one emerges). But the green one comes in from the fields, where there have never been any tanks of any description. The house has never been a farm and the land around has never belonged to it so I can't think there was anything going from the house up onto the hill. Same with an airline, I can't imagine why one would have been used.

The lady who lived here more than 10 years ago still lives nearby (her husband built the house but he has since died), although she's quite elderly and seems not to remember much of anything. I think I'll invite her down for a cup of tea and see what she knows nevertheless! So far she has told me they used to go up to the spring to clean filters and so on but that was at the time when the water was stored in a brick built cistern and this has since been superceded by a huge plastic one. She seems to know nothing about how the water managed to get from the tank to the house etc.

I did wonder about whether it was something to do with needing the pressure to get up to the header tank (up in the loft). We haven't managed to work out how it did that yet.... The header tank is still up there, the borehole is pumped for all the household water but the water for the showers goes into the header tank first. No signs of any spare pipes up there though... I don't mind calling in a plumber but at the moment we can't even explain what is going on, why various things are the way they are and where things are controlled from!

[bill1953]

All these posts remind me that I must speak to my neighbour who has various pipes running underground on my land to his 13 acres of sheeps.I need to know where they run before I start cultivation or his sheeps might be cut off!

[oldfella]

Just a thought, "and because I did the same thing" is it possible that the inner pipe has been fed through a leaking outer pipe, to save digging trench.

[Graye]

Problem solved! I managed to chat with the lady whose husband built the house. The cable was to bring a TV signal down from an aerial they had erected about two miles away as no signal could be received at the house otherwise. This was back in the 1980s and it became obsolete when satellite dishes and freesat came along. I can't believe we've solved it at last. Now I'm wondering how the signal travelled along the pipe as there is no sign of cable inside it....

[Thomzo]

That's interesting, at least it's solved the question. I suspect the copper has rotted away in the wet for quite a way back along the tube so that you can't see it. If you were to cut the pipe a few metres along you might find the copper cable.

Zoe