PLAN No. 324. CLEANED AND REPAIRED CISTERNS
A man who made his living by doing odd jobs found the cleaning and repairing of cisterns about the most profitable work he could find to do.
Using a hand-pump to remove the water, he would go down into the cistern and scrub the walls clean with a broom, then dip up and remove the dirty water and debris from the bottom. Then he would throw in several buckets of clean water to wash down any particles of dirt remaining, dip this all out, and the cistern was clean.
But repairing was necessary in most cases, and if there was a leak, he would enlarge the hole with a hammer, force in some beef suet and then fill the hole with a mortar made of cement and water. For cracks in the wall, he gave it a coat of cement and water, throwing dust-dry cement over it until the cement set hard enough to hold. If the leak was so great that the above method would not stop it, he cut a hole in the bottom, set in a pail that could be emptied when full, and treated the leak as above, afterwards filling the hole in the bottom with stiff clay, cementing it with the mortar.
These jobs paid him well, and his time was fully occupied.