The plumbers finally got out late Monday, in time to find out that the well pump needed replacing, and no they don’t keep a 3/4 hp pump on hand… why do you ask? After the supply store opened back up, they came by around 9:30 this morning and replaced the pump. The bad news? Ouch, replacing a well pump is expensive. The good news? It was $800 less than I was dreading. :-/ ...
It started off as a good weekend. I swear it did. I was up late Friday (technically, early Saturday) talking to a friend from high school, catching up on this and that. Woke up late, played a bit with the dogs and went out to Celebrity Dairy’s open house. I got to pet the baby goats [note: need to add pictures here] and look around the inn. When I left, I had 3 logs of goat cheese, a pint of blueberry preserves and a half pint of hot pepper jelly. ...
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. ...
I’ve mentioned before that I (we? maybe it’s K’s fault!) seem to be cursed with water problems. Since we like our current house, and the well is drawing very acidic water, we’ll probably continue to have water problems. Two of the more recent ones: Two months ago, we started noticing that the average daily water usage (as shown on the water softener) had gone from 60 gal/day to over 100 gal/day in a very short period of time, maybe two days. Needless to say, K and I were more than a little concerned with where all that water was going. So I ducked under the house and heard the water pump quick cycling: on, off, on, off… Well that’s not supposed to happen. It’s supposed to kick on when the house pressure drops to 30psi, and turn off when it hits 40. We called a plumber, because I’ll do a lot of plumbing, but anything like the water pump that combines water, electricity and problems underground is way out of my league. Turned out that we needed a new pressure tank (my guess: the acidic water ate away at the inner lining of the air bladder). Joy. The next month, the power bill came in very high. Our first thought was, “well, the pump was on a lot last month, so maybe that’s the problem.” It came in high again the next month. We started looking for the source, keeping a log of power use and finally, on Sunday resorted to shutting off all power in the house and adding the breakers back one at a time. I should have guessed - the pump was using a lot of power. Went under the house, watched the pressure build to 40psi, the pump cut off and all the pressure drained back out of the lines until the pump came on again. The cycle repeated on maybe a 30 second period with a 50% duty cycle. Yay! my pump was running half the day. This time, the plumber found that there was a leak at the pump itself and all the water was being dumped back down the well. On the bright side, we weren’t wasting water - just power. :-( One fun thing did come out of all of this, we bought a digital, in-house electricity meter.
As I mentioned earlier, we were having problems with the water softener and when your well water is as hard as ours is (“how hard is it?” “that’s a rather personal question sir” “no you git, how hard is the water?”) the water softener is pretty important. So the venturi gasket looked okay, but I ordered a new one since it’s a bit sensitive. I also ordered some new internal gaskets that go in the valve. The parts arrived on Saturday. Replacing the venturi gasket didn’t help, so I opened up the valve and found that I had the wrong sized internal gasket :-( . Turns out that all of the brand name softeners (GE, Sears, Kenmore, Home Depot, etc.) all use the same valve, but in two differrent sizes, a common smaller size and then the rarer large size. I’ll give you one guess as to which we own. Of course, if I had paid attention, I would have noticed that the gasket had two sizes, but oh no… Anyway, so I figure I’ve got to return the gasket, but then I google around a bit and find that in addition to the gaskets (which ironically allow the softener to suck), sometimes the symptoms we were seeing are caused by a blocked drain plug or blocked rotor. I pull out the drain plug and sure enough - it’s blocked. But even after I clear the blockage it still doesn’t suck - but in an entirely different failure mode. I clean the rotor - now it works. I still had some issues with leaks, but reseating the rotor and the whole valve has fixed those. I think we’re back in business. ...
It’s been a while since we’ve had plumbing issues. Okay, sure, we replaced the RO faucet in the kitchen six months ago, but other than that… So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that yet another water oriented appliance has broken down. This time it’s the water softener, again. When we first moved into the house, five years ago, the water softener didn’t seem to work. The first problem was a salt bridge that kept it from operating correctly. Once we figured that one out, it was easy enough to fix. Then a year or so later, the tank filled up and wouldn’t drain. That one turned out to be the venturi gasket - part of a clever device that uses pressure differentials to move water around. That one was a bit more annoying since you can’t just order the 1.5" gasket, you have to replace both the nozzle and gasket which costs about $20 + shipping. ...
I picked up a new kitchen faucet at Lowe’s today. As usual with this sort of thing, removing the old faucet was the worst part. The nuts holding the old faucet on to the sink were standard plastic nuts – attached to badly rusted screws. After 30 minutes of trying: first by hand, then with a towel by hand, then with a wrench, then oiling the screw and trying the wrench, I gave up. Thinking about it for a few minutes I realized that I have a 1″ drill bit for putting holes into a sink. I got the drill and just drilled through the plastic nuts. Victory! ...
It’s been 7 months since we’ve done plumbing renovations, so we’re apparently due. This time I have to replace the kitchen faucet. It’s started leaking badly. “But wait, you say, “a leaking faucet doesn’t require replacement, you can just replace the gaskets. Unfortunately no. I’ve mentioned before that our water is acidic with a pH of about 5.5. We’ve got the acid neutralizer in place, but many things have corroded over the years. In the case of this faucet, the weld/join between the base of the faucet and the spigot itself has developed pinhole leaks. You turn on the faucet and you get shot in the eye with water. ...
(odd: i thought i had submitted this last night. i guess i just saved it in draft) It’s been raining today which is good. The forecasters are predicting rain tomorrow and Friday which is even better. However, I’m still worried. It’s been over a month since the last real rain and close to six months since we’ve had normal rainfall. Raleigh i s down to about 3 months worth of water supply in the reservoirs – Atlanta’s not any better. What happens when cities actually run out of water? Do they evacuate? ...
Not a whole lot going on this weekend. A little shopping, a little work around the house, etc. Saturday, Bryn’s husband, Adam, came by and took a look at some trees that were worrying me. Having a master arborist tell you that, while they are dying, they won’t come down immediately was reassuring. I had this fear that they were going to come down any minute. We’ll probably still want to take them down this fall, but at least we get to pick the times 🙂 ...