On Sunday, Scott got the cistern filled with 1,400 gallons of water. (It holds 1,700.) Then he backfilled with gravel and dirt. He didn't completely cover the cistern yet; he still has to add a riser to the opening, and the riser has not been delivered. Adding the riser allowed him to get the cistern buried that much deeper (i.e., the height of the riser).

Then he spread the remaining gravel in low spots on the drive. He's spreading the extra dirt around the yard in the low spots.

Today, Scott got the cistern back into its hole!

After digging it out with the excavator, he had to tarp it for a week while he worked his job. He successfully kept it dry through a torrential storm. Today he ordered gravel and tamped a few inches down at the bottom of the hole. Then he used a winch, ropes, trees, and his truck to scooch the cistern toward the hole and lower it down.

Here it is in front of the house where you can get a better appreciation for its scale.

Here are pictures of the progress getting the cistern back into the  hole. Oh, Scott cleaned the inside of the cistern out well last week and today I went in and sprayed it down with bleach and wiped it down.

I came out and worked for about 3 hours while Scott was working on the cistern. I cleaned up the inside and organized his tools. Of course, I made a fire and burned wood cutoffs and brush that had fallen around the yard. 

Over the winter, the cistern rose out of the ground. One pipe broke there, but no other plumbing seems damaged. (Incidentally, the guy who delivers the water said this happens "all the time," and to avoid it the most important thing is to keep the cistern full of water.)

It's been much too wet in the hole to do anything about it all summer. But recently, the weather has been dry, and it finally seemed a good time to get the cistern back underground.

Scott went out one day and used the shovel to move as much dirt off the cistern as he could. The next day he drove the excavator he had rented out to the property and managed to use it to pull the cistern out of the hole. He said it pushed the excavator to the limit. 

After getting the cistern out, he moved it out of the way and on to its side. He used the excavator to dig the hole deeper.

The cistern has gotten very dirty on the inside, unfortunately, and it must be cleaned before it goes back into the ground. A bit harder to do with no running water!

On his final day at the river this week, Scott trimmed metal support posts near the riverbank, removed the rest of the deck, and burned a lot of wood. He also stopped by a pool excavating company to see if they could help with digging a bigger hole for the cistern. He's awaiting a call back to discuss.