Saving the Spring Salamanders

When your water source is from your land and "off-grid", there's a lot to learn about how it functions, and how to fix things when something goes wrong. In this case, how do you keep salamanders in the spring and out of the kitchen sink?

Here's a little background information about springs:

1. A spring is a place where the water table rises up and water bubbles up out of the ground rather than running underneath it.

2. The most basic way to get water from a spring is to dig a hole, put a barrel in it that has a pipe coming out, and use gravity to run that pipe downhill to wherever you want the water to go.

This is where the pipe comes out, with water constantly flowing in the sink:

 

3. A problem that can arise from this method is that along with the water coming down the pipe, animals may come with it too. For us, this means frogs and salamanders.




Although the opening in the lid of the barrel that allows the water to flow into it is tiny, there are some surprisingly flexible and tiny water creatures that seem quite able to get through the opening as well. Recently we've had a number of frogs and salamanders come through our spring pipe and find themselves disoriented in our kitchen sink. So we decided to put a screen on the pipe to prevent them from getting in.

The person who put the barrel in the spring did put a screen on it, but it had fallen off and we were getting at least one amphibian a week in our kitchen sink.






This was disturbing for everyone - especially the creatures that suddenly found themselves in a sink rather than a spring!

So, how do you save the spring salamanders??

 You put a new screen on the pipe!

Step 1: Remove leaves from around the barrel

Step 2: Take off the rocks and wood holding the lid on the barrel.

Step 3: Open the lid

(The white pipe is the overflow pipe, directing water out of the barrel and down the hill. There's a black pipe farther down that leads from the barrel to our sink.)

Step 4: Get S to document the process, so you can finally see me in my mucking boots :)

Step 5: Consult with S (or your resident engineer) about how to fit the screen and clamp around the pipe











Step 6: Loosen the clamp to go around the pipe

Step 7: Install new screen, and clamp it onto the pipe so hopefully this one won't fall off and let in more salamanders and frogs.

Step 8: Close the barrel and replace the wood and rocks to hold the lid on.

And that is how you keep salamanders from getting into the pipe from your spring barrel and ending up in your sink!