wet wet wet

Last week I was recalling my adventures on [someone else's] rural laneways and on Monday riffing on potholes. Storm Chandra (26/27 Jan 2026) was just the low-point of high-water for us this really soggy late Winter. For once, peculiarities in the jet-stream and push-back from anti-cyclones meant that Ireland's Ancient East has been much more rain-sodden than The West. On average Galway West gets about twice the rainfall compared to Dublin Central. The MetEireann yellow rainfall warning was for Monday 27Jan, but it was dry on the Saturday, so I trudged uphill to clean out the drains in anticipation. But clearly not enough because, while I sat out Sunday in the warm and dry, steady rain accumulated on the hill [already saturated from a month of every day some ppt] and washed out A Lot of the 100 tonnes of gravel we spread for walkers in 2022. " And nobody NOBODY would listen to me about fixing the drains before dressing the surface!" This time last year I intercepted 200kg of this downhill travelling gravel before it piled up on the county road 300m downhill. That was largely consumed for infrastructure during the installation of our solar array which went live in April 2025.

Same again with Chandra. My uphill gravel catcher filled to brimming and the overspill trundled downhill to block the drain at the county road spilling water and debris across the surface. Prime pothole conditions esp coupled with imbeciles who plough through puddles at 60km/h like it was a fairground splashworld ride. Two never-seen-this-before consequences of the never-ending wet:

1. On Mon 28 Jan the electric RCD [residual current detector] tripped OFF. With some advice from Roy the Plumber I a) unplugged everything then b) tripped off all the circuits and brought them back live one-a-time. That isolated the problem to the "Shed" circuit which was reasonably good news: none of the appliances were tripping, the broadband was working. But, the "Shed" circuit services a) the water pump and b) the freezer. So I scared up a couple of extension cords plugged them into sockets in  the nearest upstairs bedroom and looped them down the yard and in through the shed velux. Bingo and like fiat aqua. 
2. 
   Springs sprung in the lane where they never sprong before [as R] the warning flag is when the yellow clay (a compacted granite and quartz sand / sandstone) starts to blurf up through the road bed. and gravel. If you press these seeps with your boot it feels punky and a little bouncy like a quaking bog. The one shown was new but only 1 sq.m. in extent. Fortunately quickly remediated with a bucket full of fist-sized stones heeled into the soft bits. But not before our postie had driven through the surface failure at speed to start it weeping.
   Further down the lane where it narrows to 2.5m another new spring developed in the drain-side wheel-rut that was 10m long. I could not find that much stone easily and my bucket isn't strong enough.

I called our neighbourly friend John the Digger for a consult. He was optimistic - "the lane will dry out as Winter ebbs" and also cautious about starting work while the problem was still active. "Of course, if you can't drive up to your house, I can come and do something drastic . . . two Saturdays from now". Accordingly we parked the car ½km away in another neighbour's yard and installed a postbox on a stick at the bottom of the lane. I also marked the extent of the long weep with blue tags on the adjacent fence.

And sure enough, the long weep dried out enough for traffic about 2 weeks later. It's exercise to trot 300m down the lane to check the post but even the old need exercise. And it spares the grass verges near the house from being wet-ploughed several times a week by postie in the current version of enormous electric delivery van. It's carbon footprint might be low but its footprint footprint is extensive.

And we found Shane the Sparks through a strong rec by oanother neighbour. He came 4 weeks after the RCD flipped OFF [and two weeks after I'd tried making it go again] it flipped-and-stayed ON. Isn't it always the way? But while he was still within his call-out window, he did some investigation and disconnected the shed-circuit to the shed with the sketchiest roof. Now we know which wire goes to each of three sheds and we have both well-pump and freezer back on the mains. Later, Shane will come back to tidy the outside wiring and give each part its own RCD rather than one RCD-to-rule-them-all at the main fuse board for the steading. As I said to Shane "This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship"