If a cistern is full of water why do you need to clean it? Well, besides the water that it holds, the rain also brings mud and other bad things that begin to fill up the cistern. As we investigated it a bit more we realized the cistern at our Kaliko home had not been cleaned in 30 years. It was about time!
So we talked with Riske about how to do it. He said he would bring 5 guys and they would pump out the water, get rid of the mud and clean it with bleach and laundry soap. The cistern is fairly large and in fact sits under the floor of our guest room downstairs. It is about 8 feet deep and hold about 23,000 gallons of water (that’s 87,700 litres) when full. That is a whole lot of water.
The guys arrived at 5:50AM ready to work. They brought buckets, scrub brushes, drums for the clean water and a light bulb on a broken stand to give light. The pumps were set up with hoses and the water began to flow. And flow. And flow. They basically sat around the whole morning dumping water in our yard. Thankfully I am not paying by the hour!
Finally the real work began around 1PM. There was quite a bit of mud and dirt on the bottom of the cistern. Over the years some holes had appeared in the mortar also. They pulled out some pretty big roots of a Neem tree nearby that had found a way in to drink free water. Some random rocks and bricks also came out.
At the end of the day we had a clean cistern. Not sparkling clean. Not clean enough to drink out of. But it is now clean and ready to hold water we use for bathing and washing. I wonder how many inches or rain we need to fill up the cistern through a 1 1/2 inch pipe? Waiting for rain and I just heard thunder. Praise the Lord!
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