Christmas Fish
4 hours ago
Friday, September 15, 2017
Temporary water fix
After a few days messing around with my well and pump, the house finally has water again. I suspected the water pressure was too low to trip the pressure switch. The last time that happened the pump was dying. This time, that wasn't the case. Turns out the problem is somewhere in the buried water line. This line is 66 feet long and 6 – 8 feet deep to get below the frost line.
My temporary solution was to run a hose directly from the pump to the house. It's not buried, so when the hard frosts arrive it will freeze. Fortunately, we are having a really nice September. Warm weather is predicted for 10 days out. That buys me some time.
I really do not want to have to dig up the whole line by hand. There are some trouble spots that I can check out first. There's a section that froze hard one year, so I'm going to check that first. Maybe it was weakened and didn't completely fail until now. With luck I'll find the problem and be able to splice in new line.
What I'd really want to do is to put a new well on my land across the street. It's up hill from the house so gravity would do most of the work. That's not in the budget right now. We were thinking of maybe getting a home loan to catch up on projects we've been putting off. We did not plan on that until the spring.
For this winter, we are going to make the old well work. Maybe when the water line freezes it'll be our cue to head south for the winter.
-Sixbears
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I hope things work out.
ReplyDeleteSomething always does. I'm stubborn that way.
DeleteIs the 66' line large enough in diameter to allow you to pull through a new, one piece smaller plastic pipe inside the old one?
ReplyDeleteEight feet deep is serious back-hoe work.
It's too narrow, but that's a good idea. The line is buried in a very steep hill, too steep for a back-hoe. It was all pick and shovel work. I'm hoping not to have to replace the whole line.
DeleteHomedepot rents walk behind tracked excavators. Tiny little thing with a 5 gallon shovel on it. Might do the trick in awkward terrain.
ReplyDeleteI'll look into it. While I don't mind doing some shoveling by hand, I'm getting too old for that crap. Still not fully recovered from my leg injury.
DeleteIf the line is the typical black two inch poly stuff it is unlikely to be breached. That stuff is pretty much indestructible. More likely some sediment obstructing it. Before doing a whole lot of digging one thought would be to inspect the interior with a camera snake. Having a similar problem with my basement sump drain (75 yr old 8" segmented tile) I rented a snake camera from Taylor Rental in South Portland. If an obstruction is found you may try and blast some compressed air through it to clear any possible accumulated sediment. Either way a whole lot easier than digging the whole thing up. There are also companies that will do the job for a fee.
DeleteGood advice. I've a good compressor. Thanks.
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