Oh My! The buried energy module, Number 3 – our largest one we have done so far, has risen!!
The rain we had today, plus the little we had yesterday, making about 25 mm of rain overall, has caused another flood to gush off from the workshop and the Loke from our neighbours, combined with surface water from our own ground, has collected under the Number 3 module and pushed it up 6 inches!! Unfortunately, the module didn’t have any water in it, we were going to do that later and measure how much we needed to fill them up. This meant that we were given an excellent example of buoyancy in action when a pool of water forms under an air tank like a ship and hey presto – we have lift off!!
The plastic Aquacell crates, wrapped up in its rubber membrane, it what actually moved, leaving behind most of the insulation boards (apart from two sheets along one of the long sides), which means we will have to try and push down the whole unit back into place when the rainwater has drained away. We hope that the weight of the whole unit will be heavy enough to creep back down by itself, but we might dump a few tons of dirt on top to assist. We really wouldn’t want to put water into the tank as it is likely to peel away the rubber membrane off the bottom of the module, stretch or pull the rubber off the edges and leave behind the plastic crates!! The layers of insulated panels underneath will have risen as well but they will press back down again when the weight of the tank above pushes it down. We think (we hope!) that no silt and water borne material has got underneath the module, just water! It hopefully will settle down flat again! Fingers Crossed!
Module-3-Floating-150mm-on-Rain-Water-6
Module-3-Floating-150mm-on-Rain-Water-3
None of the other tanks show any signs of rising so we, thank goodness, can say that the ground water is still well below us and will not be a problem in the long term as they will have water in them anyway!