StatCounter

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Well Water Plan B



Last fall I was in a mad scramble trying to fix the water supply line to the house. It was fine on the well side and fine at the house, but somewhere in the sixty or so feet between -not so fine. I’d put in a shallow buried line as a temporary fix. It was only meant to last for the summer.

With bad weather looming and no fix in sight, I came up with plan B. I went down to the building supply center and bought foam panels. Each panel was two feet by eight feet and two inches thick. Using tent pegs I stacked the panels over the water line. Then my son-in-law and I buried everything under a few inches of dirt. It wasn’t an elegant solution, but the water line never froze all winter.

It did freeze once in the basement, but that was because I was unable to insulate inside as well as I would have liked to. My infected leg was acting up. As a stop gap measure I set up a small electric heater to keep the pipes from freezing. It was supposed to be temporary but then I ended up in the hospital. My recovery was slow and long so the short term heater became long term. It raised my power grid usage quite a bit, but at least we had water.

When I came up with plan B I was hoping it would last until the first of the year. My thinking at the time was we could always shut the house down and go camping in Florida. Little did I know that instead of seeing warm beaches I’d be seeing doctors and hospitals. Fortunately, the emergency fix worked well enough to keep the water flowing.

I’ve a lot of house projects to catch up with once the weather warms up. However, I’ve planning on seeing those beaches this coming fall and winter. Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men . . . and bears. . .

-Sixbears

6 comments:

  1. lol - I've seen temporary fixes last for decades.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Could happen here too! Hope to do something a bit better, but it's hard to mess with what's working.

      Delete
  2. Sounds like it did its job, temporary or not.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This past winter was a real test and it did better than expected.

      Delete
  3. I remember those days when I lived up north. Now I have to put up with the heat and humidity for most of the year just to have warm winters, but every now and then, we do get a really cold cool front come through.

    ReplyDelete