Log of the Bunker Ranch Observatory

The lot at BRO now has water and electricity; the next step is to provide a place for the water to go after it gets, er, used, if you catch my drift. So it was time to install a septic tank. (Note for city folks: no, every piece of land does not automatically come with a nearby sewer line. Out in the country, one installs a large tank and lets bacteria do the work of liquefaction; this liquid is then allowed out into the ground, spread over a large area. Of course, this installation is done a suitable distance from the well.)

The New Mexico Environment Department got involved here, sending someone out from Las Cruces, over 200 miles away, to inspect the installation and determine the total length of leach line (the line that carries the liquid out of the tank for absorption into the ground) required. I went the overkill route here, anticipating the possibility of someday building a home on this property; the septic tank system is sized for a 4-bedroom house. But that meant that we needed 300' of leach line, because the soil here is not exactly ready and willing to absorb much water. This was shorter than the 436' trench for the electrical run, but it's deeper, and just as tough to dig.

This time, the trenches needed to be 5' deep, with 3' of rock in the bottom. This meant 4 semi-trailers of rock had to be brought in; it was really quite impressive to watch those long trucks dump their loads.

The leach line was then laid atop the rock, and the whole thing was buried.

Running electricity in a rural area (at least in New Mexico) is kind of an interesting exercise. First, my driveway is 2300' from the power line that runs down the main road into the subdivision (such as it is); so I had to run that distance on power poles, at the then-current rate of $2.70 per foot. Fortunately, my neighbor across the road wanted power, too; her driveway was located 1/4 mile from the main road. So what that meant was that we shared the expense for the first 1/4 mile, and I had to pay the remainder myself. If someone farther down the road wants power, they are supposed to reimburse me for the part of the line run they share with me; the power company supposedly handles this bit of finance. We'll see if I ever see any of that money.

It turned out that my chosen location for the well and observatory building was too far from the road for a run from a pole-mounted step-down transformer, so I needed a ground-mounted transformer installed next to the well. I did not want wires strung across my property, hanging in the telescopes' field of view, so we buried a 436' conduit in a trench constructed to the power company's specification.

After that was done, the power company came in and pulled a main power line through the conduit (at $7 per foot!), and dropped in the transformer and a meter pole (the latter was left laying on the ground for us to erect). A local electrician wired in the well pump, and the power company came back out and installed the meter.

I thus became the recipient of yet another monthly bill.

After acquiring the 40 acres of New Mexico high desert that would become the final resting place of the Bunker Ranch Observatory in May/June of 1999, it was time to begin construction.

The first thing to do was drill a well. This had two purposes: first, there was really no point in doing a lot of construction until there was an assured water supply for the observatory; and second, the well's location provides a handy aiming point for the electrical installation, which was to come next.

Thus, in December of 1999, the well driller commenced his work. He had an old-fashioned impact drilling rig; it raises and lowers a long cylindrical slug which crashes its way through the earth, stone, and rock layers bit by bit to create the well shaft. This, as you might imagine, is a slow process; the well driller actually camped out on the property for about 7 weeks.

I wish I could have spent a bit of time out there with him learning more about how this process works. I would have liked to have seen the bottom end of that slug, to try to understand how it goes about actually drilling down instead of simply compacting the bottom of the hole. And I only have a simple understanding of how he went about actually inserting the well casing after drilling down to the aquifer.

We could have hired a well driller with a high-speed drilling rig that would have punched a hole in just a couple of days. But it would have only saved time, not money, and I liked the idea that we'd get an 8-inch diameter well shaft the slow way (the fast way would yield just a 3" shaft). I just figured that, on the off chance that the water supply was slow (it is very slow on the other side of the valley), a larger hole would be a better idea, providing more surface area for water to seep into the well.

Anyway, the driller hit mud at about 250 feet down, and hit a strong supply of water at about 300'. He drilled to 320', and cased the well to 305'. A high-volume pump was then lowered into the well to clean it out; once the water began to run clear, the driller measured the flow at a continuous 20 gallons per minute. This is far more than adequate to provide all the water the observatory needs.

After sealing the top of the well and providing some above-ground plumbing, this job was done. It's time for electricity and a phone line.