Cistern

I have found so many things in our yard that I have quit being surprised. I found a set of log splitters, a couple of shovels, lots of kid’s toys, pruning shears, unidentifiable machine parts and more. I had heard that we had a cistern, but thought it was in a very different part of the property. I didn’t know what a cistern was and honestly did not really care.

We had a couple different places in our yard that looked like mounds of ivy. You know there is something under that mound, but you are kind of afraid of what you will find. We have seen snakes on our property and the previous owners talked about a problem they had with mice, so that is where my mind goes when I start poking around these mounds. Anyway, there was one ivy mound near the front of our yard that turned out to be a large tree stump that we had ground down. We poked around another mound that was close to the back of the house and found that there was a half oak barrel somewhere under the overgrowth. The barrel was pretty rotted, so I was able to pull it out in pieces. As I got closer to the bottom I noticed that the barrel was sitting on a concrete slab. At this point the barrel had fallen apart and I was left with a pile of dirt and ivy. As I shoveled the dirt away my shovel scrapped something metal. It turned out to be a piece of rusted metal that was about 3’ X 2’. I started to move it a little and heard small splashes. I knew right away what it was.

It is full of water, so it is hard to tell how large it is. I dropped a line in the water and can tell that it is about 12’ deep. We have done some research into pumps and plan to use it for irrigation. We will keep you posted on what we end up doing and how it works.

One more thing, it got us to thinking and looking around a little more. There are two faucets in the basement that don’t have a sink under them. You can tell that they did at one point in time, but it is gone now. I wonder if those faucets were/are connected to the cistern?

UPDATE - 

Well, the faucets in the basement don't hook up to anything. They are just pipes to nowhere! However,  look at the latest image. If what we found was the cistern for the house, what the heck is this?!?! This appears to be a cistern as well. All of our research shows that this is more what a cistern should look like, so we are a bit confused at this point. We have not been able to get the lid off at this point to see if it is full of water or not. Are they both cisterns? If so, are they attached? We will keep digging and let you know what we find.