The Adventures of Tanjiro, Uschi-Swirl, & Vladimir: Happy Plumbers

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Happy Plumbers

The other morning we woke to no water, always a frustrating eye-opener. This was a regular occurrence when we first purchased the strawbale "shack", but ~1.5 years ago I installed a new 220v Grundfos pump in the well to fill the 1500gal cistern and a new Grundfos SQ constant water pressure system (set to 75psi) to pump water to the house and the hose bibs from the cistern. All of the water headed into the house first goes through a sediment filter, an activated charcoal filter, and a UV filter before leaving the well house. We even have a fourth stage of activated carbon filtration on a drinking water tap and in the refrigerator supply, basically we've got nice clean water at all inside faucets, when it flows.

So, either the well was dry (possible but not likely), or there was an electrical issue, or there was a break in the line. A quick check in the well house revealed soggy ground, so a line break, and close to the well house. Problem and location of the problem found! I shut the electric off to the pumps and broke out the shovel to dig up the pipes. It turns out that the "plumber" (me) that originally installed this new line to the house, didn't know what he was doing, and had a threaded fitting with a little lateral pressure on it. The threaded plastic just failed. I cut out the section of pipe to be replaced and went into my stock-pile of supplies. I started fitting it all together, "correctly" this time, and amazingly I had all the parts I needed!!! No trip to the hardware store required. Wooo Hooo! I reached for the blue glue and,... and,... it was all dried out and bad,.... darn,... I had to go to the store,.... just for glue. That was almost a record setting repair for this DIY-er, no parts shopping needed. It turned out that I returned a valve that I discovered during the repair process and actually got $1.43 back,... okay still a "Wooo Hooo" worthy effort.

Anyway, back to the repairs. As I dug out some more pipe, to make the repair "correctly", Lesley brought the boys out to play. Uschi came right over and inspected the happenings.