Plumbing Problems

Our field school is currently experiencing some ugly plumbing problems.  The second picture shows the drain pipe for our outside sink.  Notice how the pipe is duct taped, and yet it continues to spew water out of various leaks.  The sink itself is the large concrete thing on the right side of the photo.  It is a long trough, about 7 feet long with three spigots.  We wash plates, cups, bowls and utensils for about 30 people twice a day in this sink.  Sometimes the other team of archaeologists on site also use this sink to wash artifacts.  Either way it gets a lot of use and seems to be close to catastrophic failure.

The blockage is near the duct taped mess, the end of the pipe has no water coming out of it.  We are forced to manually bail out the sink with a big yogurt tub so that it will not overflow onto the folks on dishwashing duty.  Several people, myself included, think that we should just take the tape off and let the pipe fail, as it is not connected to any type of sewer system, it just runs free over the cliff. I know, YUCK!

The top photo is of Andrea as she attempting to keep leaf litter and pine needles out of the runoff channel.  See how it exits out of that little hole in the bottom of the wall?  If we don't keep the channel free of debris the soapy icky water pools up around the feet of the dishwashers.  A muddy mess that we don't need.

Our second plumbing issue is that the kitchen sink in our work space has become blocked and is filled with a dark brown liquid. Gross! Draino has been used with no discernible effect.  It is now taped off like some nasty bacteria crime scene. A frowning emoticon sign is taped above the sink.

Oh, and to make matters worse, our AC in the studio is barely functioning. The repair man was here until after 9 pm last night. 

More soon.