Water works

For those of you who've been curious about my water situation, in short, it's still frozen.

Progress of a sort has been made. I've been running hot water through a 3/8 diameter line and sliding it down the ¾ inch supply line. The hot water melts the ice, allowing the 3/8 line to slide deeper into the supply line. That worked until it hit a 90 degree elbow that's buried underground.

A ¼ inch line spliced to the end of the 3/8 line is just small enough to turn the corner in the 90 degree elbow. Three more feet of supply got thawed out that way. However, I ran out of ¼ line before running out of ice. The supply line has never frozen this deep before, not in 40 years. With any luck, the additional 12 feet of line I picked up at the hardware store should do the trick. If not, I'm going to let nature take its course. It is warming up.

So what am I doing for water in the mean time? I'm hauling drinking water in the waterbricks that I used on the sailboat. That's 4 – 3.5 gallon water containers. Sometimes I fill them at my daughter's. Other times I walk down to my well and fill them at the overflow pipe.

Water for washing, dishes, and toilet flushing comes from melting snow on the woodstove. I even did a small load of laundry in a bucket. There's no shortage of snow. Let's call it making the best of a bad situation.

Tuesday was sunny and the temperature hit all of 50 degrees. Of course, it drops back down into the 20s at night, but that's normal enough for this time of year. Melt during the day, freeze at night. That's great for maple syrup, but we won't really thaw out until it stays above freezing at night.

In spite of these little problems, it's still good to be home.

-Sixbears