As I posted above, I have a need to dig a few holes on our place, but before that happens I'll tell a story on one of my favorite holes on our place and one that I currently hate the most. This took place back in December of 2012.
We have a 12 acre lake on our property that was built back in 1952. I grew up coming over to the property, fishing and duck hunting on our little lake and hunting squirrels in our creek bottom (that was about 100 acres of native pecan trees) below the lake. In the '80s, a large reservoir was built and when it filled it flooded that hundred acres of pecan trees.
The normal spillway elevation of our little lake is about 16' above the elevation of the big lake. The spillway is constructed of 3 4' joints of 36" dia concrete pipe for the vertical and 12 joints of 24" for the horizontal. The outlet of horizontal pipe falls 4' into a small pool, which then flows down the old creek bed until it hits open water of the big lake. After a good rain and the lake level is up a couple of feet, there will be a 2' dia water jet from the outlet. This water tends to wash the tar between the pipe joints which then started the pipe to crack and the joints to widen.
Normally there is some seepage between some of the vertical joints and the pipe always has a trickle of water. But, with it being so dry that fall, the lake level was down 5+' and the pipe was dried up. Dad had wanted to check out the pipe and unknown to the rest of the family had crawled through it a week before to inspect the pipe and see if it needed some repairs. We were up at the place for the opening of duck season and after shooting a few birds that morning dad mentioned he'd like to go see about repairing some spots on the pipe.
We got some caulking tar and some mortar mix and headed down in the hole. Dad went down in the hole and into the horizontal. I went down to the bottom of the vertical and my buddy and son mixed up mortar and lowered to me in a bucket and then dad pulled another bucket with a refill back and forth from me.
Oh yeah, here's a pic of my Dad when he was done. He turned 80 the following month.
Lake and spillway
Vertical section
Horizontal section, you really can see light at the end of the tunnel
old gopher