Outside our backdoor is a bit of an eyesore…a five-metre iron tower with a 5000 litre water tank perched on top. Its been there a long time, and I expect it was there long before the other, giant 100,000 litre tank was installed. Its been there long enough that a jasmine vine grew up to the top, climbing the iron frame and hitching a lift on the heavy stay-wires that anchored the tank to the railway-sleeper platform.

The connections on the up and down pipes leak a bit, so quite some time ago I shut it off and we've never used it. Notionally it’s a useful thing to have. If, say, the power went off, we would have access to reasonably high pressure water just on the gravity feed from the tower. It would be good to keep the water refreshing so it doesn't just sit in the sun for months on end and stagnate. But I would have had to burn time getting the plumbing fixed and I've had higher priorities.

So I haven't paid much attention to it, which has come back to bite me…

About three months ago I was driving through the gate to the houseyard. Something was amiss, I knew, but wasn't sure what. I scanned around, and looking up, I noticed the water tank appeared to be on a slight tilt. I walked over and stood under it looking up. Hard to see anything, as it was a bright day and the view of the underside of the tank tower is in perpetual shade.

I came back later in the day, when the sun was down, and then went back and got a torch. I still couldn't see much, so went and got a ladder and climbed up the outside of the tower. It took a minute or two to work out what I was seeing, but it made me flinch.

The jasmine had contributed to the tower platform being perpetually cold and wet, and to my horror I found myself looking at a mass of rotting wood. The two main sleepers were in place, but one had collapsed internally, crushed to a bow shape. The secondary cross-pieces were also rotten, all rounded ends and missing fragments.

The tank was leaning because the wooden platform was collapsing.

5000 kilos, suspended five metres in the air. If it came down if could crush the house pumps, or smash the septic tank, or hit the shed, or best option, simply crush a tree. The mini-flood surge of 5000 litres could be quite dangerous and destructive too….the lean was aiming at the shed wall, on the other side was all my hay for the rest of the year.

I had a sleepless night, then next day drained the water out of it. Because it wasn't being used it wasn't anywhere near full, but there was at least 1500 litres that flooded our back yard. Better a flood that a tidal wave though….

I spoke to our regular plumber, and although he understood what I was saying, wanted to see it before he offered any advice. When he came he almost instantly said we would need to remove the jasmine. One, the weight of the jasmine was contributing to the collapse. Two, the jasmine was hiding how the tank was fixed to the platform. It wasn't possible to discuss "what next?" without having a clear view.

Over the next few weeks I got that done. On the top rung of my ladder, precariously cutting away the jasmine. It was a bit of a surgical process…more snipping than yanking out vines. As it started to peel away I would snip and snip, until a huge ball of knots would be hanging by one or two remanant vines. Two more snips and the ball would drop to the ground, revealing another patch of exposed tank. It was a slow process….!

I took away four trailer loads of cuttings before I stopped. I pretty removed everything below the platform, but struggled to cut away the vines above the platform without putting weight on the already tortured timber.

I got a quote for a replacement platform, this time made of iron. When he came to measure it up, I asked him about the "How?" of getting the platform replaced.

Which led me to Martyn, who owns a hybrid crane/forklift called a teleloader. It’s a heavy, compact machine, the sort of thing you'd use to lift a swimming pool over your house to drop into the backyard.

It was a tight space, and it took a couple of goes to line up a good pick up position. That involved pruning back the big tree. The tank had originally been wired to the platform to keep it in place. The remnant jasmine was still clinging to the wire stays. Martyn used his loader to position nearby, then got me to crank him up on a pallet and hacked away at the last of the jasmine. One section had some over-long timbers sticking out, and Martyn cut them off with a saw. He also needed to cut the steel bolts holding the sleepers to the tower. The vibrations of that cutting started to shake loose and throw down fragments of rotten timber.

And then, when his forks forced into the crushed timber and took the weight of the tank, the platform really started to disintegrate. First big chunks dropped, then a whole sleeper lazily swung out and dropped with a thud. Very scary. Martyn quickly juggled it all in mid-air, shoved the fork blades in to catch the tank, hoiked it up and back as the rest of the platform fell apart, and gently eased the tank down.

I had set aside some heavy beams on the ground to park the tank. By the time we'd lifted the tank onto the resting spot, the platform had fragmented completely.

There's a lot to do from here. Once the new platform is built we need to get it in place, then Martyn has to come back and lift up the tank again. It needs to be replumbed.

It also turns out the concrete footings to the tower were almost non-existent…the first tentative lift of the platform, when it was still fixed to the tower, jerked the tower itself, and one leg came up briefly revealing a very small blob of concrete.

So I have to dig that out, re-foot and level it.

The other option is to scrap the whole thing and use the tank somewhere else.

I'm thinking about that…..!