The Drip, a novel by Michael Gullo
“Wow! I gotta leave you kids alone more often.”
“Ya, bossman. I’s thinkin the same thing.”
“Cody, yer so full of it. Act like productive. You walked off into the woods and didn’t come back for twenty minutes.”
“I had to go.”
“Did you shit in my woods?”
“I went home.”
“Anyway, you got both frames built, and you fully paneled that first one, and you took the pipe delivery to boot.”
“Um, so, we did have three hours.”
“Productive ones. We’re still way behind. I almost don’t want to interrupt and give directions, but we have big needs all late, past due. I need to split the work. Anybody got preferences?”
“What’s the work?”
“We need a team to continue solar while me and the other team push in a relief for all this water. Weather’s calling for rain all next week, and the spill pipe is plugged too long as it stands. Between the springs and the runoff from last week, this diffused over-topping will not last any longer. It’s soaked through, and we gotta drain it.”
“I’ll run the ex.”
“I’m sorry, Cody. I can’t let you do that. It’s gotta be me.”
“Hell it does.”
“I guess you can walk off into the woods again, then.”
“Yeah, right. Slow yer roll, Cody.”
“Tanner, you and Devin on solar. Did you get that wire cut and pulled through?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay, get the disconnects and the other boxes out of the delivery pallet. Put the disconnects here and put the rest in the shed. Get the tape reel out of the trailer and lay it out for the two-fifty measure. Cut the wire. Marry up the pairs, and get them into the conduit.”
“You got it.”
“Cody, you’re in the skid to hold the pipe down. Rusty you’re spotter.”
“Do you want the wire pulled with equal ends sticking out?”
“No, stick enough at the shed to land the connections and leave the extra at this end.”
“So, I’m going to dig the back side to the knee, leave off about a foot short of the water. Put in the pipe and open the last foot slow. Let it drain a couple inches at a time. Any brighter ideas?”
“So, get in a stick of pipe. Run it up to the edge of a tiny bit of land between the pipe and the water. Cody holds the pipe in place with the skid bucket in case the controlled release gets out of control, the majority of the water goes through the pipe.”
“Rusty’s got it. Cody?”
“I get it.”
“Okay, I’ll dig. Go get me the pipe.”
“There’s some wet soil.”
“Good spot, Rus. Shove the pipe in. Give it another shove.”
“Water’s coming out down here.”
“Get the level. That cant is too steep. We want almost flat. That’s it. Put a little dirt under that far end.”
“This good?”
“Yes. Jam your bucket home and get out. Everyone off the dam while I nibble at this.”
“It’s fine.”
“Nope. Off the dam. Me and the machine. There it goes. If this goes right, this will be a while.”
“That’ll take over night.”
“No, I’ll speed it up when we get under the lip.”
“Still gonna be hours.”
“I live here now. I can watch it.”
“If it runs out, it’ll be fast.”
“It’s running just right now. There’s a current, even.”
“Wait. I got an idea. Don’t shut me down, bossman. Put the auger blade on the pipe, and I can go get a full bucket of dirt in the skid. If it gets going too fast, I can dump in a plug fast to stop it.”
“Cody, that’s an excellent idea!”
“Pond’s down six inches. Come here and look at the flow. The water is digging out the plug at exactly the rate of the drop – like it just agrees with us.”
“You ain’t dug that?”
“Nope. The current’s digging it.”
“That’s cool.”
“It definitely is. Day’s over in an hour. Anyone wanna stand around with their hands on their hips talking about, yep, that’s workin’, yep sure is?”
“I’ll hang out with you, bossman.”
“I can’t.”
“Not me.”
“Rusty’s my ride today.”
“It’s just you and me, Cody.”
“It’s more than halfway down the pipe now.”
“Startin pick up, though.”
“It’s late.”
“Cold as fuck.”
“I was about to say get in the machine and warm up, but we’re past half the pipe now. If the whole thing pops off all at once, the pipe can handle it.”
“Ya. Spill side’s good too. Dug out a little, but they’s a boulder right under the flow.”
“Check that old inflow pipe. How deep is it?”
“Top four inches showin.”
“So we raised the pond four inches.”
“Always needed that. The fish’ll hide in the cutback now.”
“I was thinking I’d shock the bass out and go with Trout.”
“Deep enough. We used to swim here, and I never touched bottom fore my ears wouldn’t let me deeper.”
“Spring fed cold water deep enough for eating fish.”
“Oh, we ate the fish. They’s Bullhead in here, and them Sunnys, they’s delicious. Ate a Bass or two. Best though is them turtles.”
“You ate a lot out of this pond, didn’t you?”
“We did.”
“I’m going to use it for the geothermal loop.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a type of heat and air – like seventy-percent more efficient.”
“That efficiency rating stuff’s bullshit.”
“Yeah, the ratings are. But this is different. Think about your outdoor unit. It brings in the air at the temp it’s at, and it uses a compressor to condense that air to a fixed temperature to push out through your vents.”
“That’s how it works?”
“Yup. Well, if the incoming air is one hundred degrees, and you need to work the compressor to make it into fifty-nine degree air, that’s a forty degree delta. The same machine doing the same work on the same day might be taking seventy degree air and turning it into fifty nine degree air. That’s a constantly shifting and changing load. And it gets worse in heating mode. Imagine the outdoor temp at twenty five, and you need to put out ninety degree air.”
“A sixty five degree delta.”
“Exactly, Cody. And you took the jargon too. Here’s the final. The air is always a different temperature, a different humidity. A different pressure. The fan and the compressor sit in a hostile environment. What geothermal does is change that whole equation. You run a few thousand feet of high density poly ethylene pipe, and you fill it with water, and you drop it in the pond. You run that pipe to the corner in your basement…”
“And the compressor sits inside, same humidity, not hostile. The pipe sits in water, same temperature. The delta never changes.”
“There you go, brother.”
“But no fishing.”
“Yeah, fishing’s tough.”
“Then why change to Trout?”
“Well, the HDPE pipe is planned, it’s coiled. It’s predictable. If you know where it is, you can fish around it. If a fish gets snagged, you know to cut off so you don’t pull it free or poke a hole in it.”
“So, the loop ain’t just tangled about?”
“Nope, we can plan for it and fish around it. Lose a few fish to the thing, but still fishable for the people that get to watch the pipes get sunk.”
“I’ll be here that day.”
“We all will. Get in the truck. This thing is draining safe, and even if it blows the plug, that’s less than half a pipe at once, and it’s fine.”
“Six hours, ten inches down.”
“Yep. Get in the truck. I’ll ride you home.”