If You Own a House

When you own your own home you can't call the landlord when things go wrong because you are the landlord. So, when things go wrong, its handy to be handy. For example; broken water pipes never come at a convenient time; they never ask permission or give you a warning-they just blow when they feel like it-kind of rude if you ask me. I am talking from more experience then any homeowner or landlord should ever have to go through-we're considering 'plumbing' as a second career. We know why they charge what they do.
This past Sunday it was a beautiful morning as I was out feeding. I'm loving that the sun is getting up earlier and earlier-its so much more enjoyable to be out feeding without having to juggle a flashlight and I don't feel like I'm out feeding at night-my personal thing. Anyhow, I went about my normal morning routine feeding and watering everyone. The water pressure was normal so nothing had made me think that there was a problem.....yet. As I was about done, I went to check the cat food on the porch-I'm so glad that I did-not because they were almost out. This caused me to make a trip down to the pump house so that I could fill their bowl and there I saw what I have decided to be my 2nd worst water fear-the pump house was filling up! My 1st water fear would be our house or under our house filling up(thankfully this hasn't happened-well sort of-the washing machine started flooding things a couple years ago-that's another story though). Anyhow, I could hear the water spraying but wasn't sure were it was coming from-there was 4" of water in the pump house-much better than the 4' that we dealt with quite a few years ago in December when the main line from the well broke, there was 6-8" of snow on the ground, it was after 10 at night and it was a Saturday night which means that the hardware store is closed and the only pump that was normally available to use was out of town-we bucketed the water out-that was a long night. Thankfully, the owner to the hardware store opened up Sunday so that we could get the parts to fix it.
Okay, back to this past Sunday-I immediately turned the power off to stop the pump and then called Bryan-I was outside, he was inside just getting up-not the best thing to wake up to. After he came out and figured out were the water was coming from we started pumping the water out-we had acquired a pump after the last time. Unfortunately this pump proved to be inefficient for this so we ended up using the Shop Vac. We also ended up having to make a trip to Elko to get the parts because, at first we tried capping the line that split-it went to an outside faucet that was never used-this didn't work so we were going to have to cut and re-do the main line from the pressure tank and of course this was the only size of pipe and pipe parts we didn't have extras for and to top it off-we couldn't get a hold of the hardware store owner so off to Elko we went.
Did I mention that I also had 3 girls(they had a friend stay the night) to get ready for church with no water? Bryan was able to make a temporary 'fix' so that I could get them out the door to Granny's.

I had planned on cleaning the pump house out this year but this is not what I had in mind.

Gross-soggy cat food and straw!

Kind of a tight spot-when is plumbing not!

The little pump............

that just didn't have enough umph! A new pump is on the 'to buy' list.

So at 16gal at a time we 'drained' the pump house.

So in light of this impromt plumbing issue we are now fully 'stocked' with every imaginable peace of pipe parts in every size that is on the property-I hope we never have to use them.....all. The people at Home Depot were very thankful to not be in out shoes when they first glanced at the cart the was "full" of couplers, elbows, caps and everything else that was in that row for 3/4", 1/2" and 1 1/4" pipe-they were also very thankful for the business.

In light of being thankful though, I have lots of things to be thankful for despite the situation;

- the weather was warm, no snow, no rain

- there was only 4" instead of 4'

- Bryan was on his days off(wasn't the case last time)

- Granny was able to take the girls

- the repair went well and is better than it was before
- Bryan new how to fix it-its handy being handy!