Welcome to my Amish rural paradise, water problems are no extra charge.
In this month’s exciting installment, K and I note that we are lacking in water pressure on Saturday night before we go to bed. Sunday rolls around and sure enough, no water. My guess was that either the well pump or the pressure switch had gone bad. We weren’t going to be too happy if it was the pump, since we replaced it less than three years ago. I went out and bought some drinking water, checked the rain barrels to see if we had water for toilets and called the plumber.
When the plumber arrived this (Monday) morning, the first thing he did was to check for problems with the pressure switch. No such luck, power was getting to the pump. That meant they had to crack the well and pull up the pump from three hundred feet underground. Once the pump saw the light of day, it was a simple matter to see if the pump was good – connect it straight to the power. Doing so provided the only bit of good news: the pump was working fine. Somewhere in the 300′ of wire that provide power to the pump was the problem.
Sure enough, they found a number of places where the insulation had been chewed through, and others where the wire itself was either almost or entirely split. It turns out that every time the pump comes on, it torques a bit, and going through 300′ of heavy clay and rock provides plenty of opportunity to tear at the wires.
Fortunately, it was all put together by noon and we’re back in business. I thought I would never want to get out of the shower 🙂