Water pipes

[perrymk]

I was wondering about the water pipes I have seen on the AT. How are they set up? Is a pipe perforated on one end and hammer into the side of a hill? Is a little more prep involved in setting it up? How is the site selected?

It’s just something I’ve wondered about. Maybe someone knows.
Thank you.

[Nanatuk]

I think your referring to the piped springs. Piped springs are usually developed by the trail crews that maintain that section of the trail.

As I understand it, if the crew locates signs of a spring that isn't easily accessed (rising into a muddy hillside or dissipating into a marshy area, they can try driving a pipe into the hillside below it and tap into the rising water and divert it to someplace easier to collect it. I'm not sure if the pipe is perforated or not. I have seen the pipe repositioned (pulled out and driven back into the hillside) to improve the flow, but it looked like a solid pipe. Took a while for the mud to clear.

In my neck of the woods we drive sand point wells. The sand point is a perforated pipe that serves as the point of the well were the water enters and hopefully keeps the sand out. It didn't look like a sand point.

[LoneStranger]

Thought this was going to be about water pipes for a minute

Most piped springs I've run into here in New England are redirecting and focusing the flow rather than pulling water directly from under ground. No perforations, just the top end buried in what is hopefully a pool. As things get dry I've had to press that top end down if it was above the water line.

[garlic08]

They're referred to as "piped springs." The better ones have a masonry "spring box" at the source. I've seen a few along old CCC-era roads that also have a masonry structure with a basin at the low end.

[HooKooDooKu]

The ones I've seen in GSMNP, it's just a pipe pushed into the side of the hill. If the hill is not particularly steep, I've seen the back side of the pipe.
As Nanatuk mentioned, it's basically to divert some of the water to make it easier to collect.

[turtle fast]

With any spring, you may be best served by quickly looking around the area before collecting your water. Once I almost filled up and had caught out of the corner of my eye flashes of white on the ground above the inground piped spring that were multiple wads of toilet paper along with the accompanying human waste. It wasn’t one or two piles but several piles. Like who does that?!

[zelph]

Here is an interesting read about tapping into a natural water source:

https://oneacrevintagehome.com/devel...spring-part-1/

[zelph]

This video shows some drilled pipes used to tap into a spring source:



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[peakbagger]

Years ago we were on spring section hike in the Smokies, it was early season so not a lot of people on the trail. One day we were hiking to one of the shelters and there were fresh tires tracks in the trail and at the shelter were two USGS SUVs parked there. They had lots of gear unloaded and looked like they were testing the water source. the water source was on the opposite side of the ridge from the trail and looked like a small tile box in the ground in large field with pipe entering one side with the excess water draining out the other side. We talked to them for a bit and they had copies of the original CCC plans for the water supply. In order to prep for that water source, they stripped a large field and set in a network of tile pipes all connected to that one spring box and then covered them with gravel and hay and then loamed and seeded the field. So sometimes just a pipe in the ground may be attached to a lot more than one would think.

[perrymk]

I had envisioned it might be something along the lines of the CCC plans.

One thought was the multiple pipes running into one.

Another thought was setting a large sheet of fiberglass (or similar) to funnel the water to a central point to pipe.

It’s interesting to me for no particular reason. Thanks for the replies.

[garlic08]

One thing I really enjoyed on my AT hike was someone, a real artist, was hiking ahead of me and building little spouts out of rhododendron leaves at many of the trickles in the South. That made it a joy to fill up a bottle. I thought I pay it back at one site, and after 10 minutes of futzing with it I had nothing to show for it.

That reminds me of Andy Goldsworthy's outdoor art. If you haven't seen it, look at his website.