Ok, blog-watchers (I know you're out there), I have an engineering problem for you. In the picture is a 90 mm stormwater diverting switch. It is basically a T-junction with a rotating baffle which can completely (or partially) block off one of the attached pipes. I have it set up so that it can block off the outlet to the street, forcing all of the stormwater to go into my water tanks. When the tanks are full all of the rain that is collected must go through the tanks and out the overflow, from whence it goes into a soak under the back lawn. This actually works, by the way. There is now a clearly visible snake pattern of longer, lusher grass, following the ag pipe exactly.
Anyway, the switch is definitely
not working. It might work if you only put nice clean rain water through it, but when it encounters slightly dirty rain water it seizes up like a rusty trap. I can get it to shift around by tapping the top sideways gently with a hammer, but this damages the PVC and is clearly not going to work for long.
So, the engineering problem is this: how can I attach something to this device to get the additional leverage I need, without breaking the lid, which is only about 2 mm thick? And preferably with a removeable handle, because this diverter is sitting in the ground and would normally be about 50 mm below a cover.
See what you can come up with, blogsters.
to cut all five of them. By far the easiest thing for everybody involved would have been for them to dig away beside the pipes a little and push the post in between. But that would have taken them a little bit of effort, so instead they cut through them all.
That's an electrical conduit going through the middle. I'm surprised they didn't have to cut it too. I suppose they were afraid of it. Notice in particular that two of the pipes now sit above the level that the pavers will go to. And this is right where the gate is. Anyway, the plumber is coming back tomorrow to try again.
