water water

[sasha]

somewhere 'twixt my wellhead and the house
an underground pipe has broken
frozen, likely
so no water flows in -
none to drink
to cook
to wash
to flush -
so the contractors and I dance
with planetary alignments
and prior committments
and endless winter storms
(two per week on average)
until the hole can get dug...
and in the meantime
my biological imperatives
have compelled me to abandon ship
to seek well-watered shelter
where I can at least poop and shower
in compliance with societal norms
and in so doing I can enrich the coffers
of local merchants offering succor
to reluctant travellers such as I
as well as the tradesmen
who now have me over a barrel
with promises to get to me
someday

[saw]

big time bummer roy
sorry you're dealing with this
and our dystopian world
at the same time.....hang tough my friend

[sasha]

the novelty wears off pretty quickly. I find myself thinking lots of things that start with "At least..."
at least I've got a place to crash
at least I can wash, shave, shower, & toilet properly
at least the breakfasts are free (well, not really - an un-itemized part of the tab)
I'm a solitary beast, but yesterday afternoon the anonymity got to me - I couldn't face an afternoon during a winter storm hunkered down alone in my room with cable news intoning all that was wrong with the world, so I brought my reading down to the lobby, where at least (see?) I had the white noise of strangers milling around to assure me that here, anyway, there were no Musk oxen.....

[saw]

water pipes in Maryland tend to freeze first in kitchens that were built over a crawl space rather than a closed in basement.....many times when I was younger I would crawl into that space in my old house with a hair dryer and extension cord and have success warming the copper til the water flowed. Of course you have to try that relatiely early, because if it's a truly deep freeze and you know warming won't work, the copper often splits and you don't know it until there is a thaw...

Do you have a well ?

[mnaz]

Some people like winter. I don't. I always thought of winter as death. Yes, sometimes summer is just as bad, but at least water doesn't freeze in summer.

[sasha]

The problem is outside the house. Somewhere between the basement & the well, there's a leak (or was as of last week). If left alone for long enough, the pump can deliver enough water to the house for several seconds of respectable flow from the taps - but then it collapses to a trickle. An hour or more later the situation repeats. THe leading hypothesis is that the pump labors against that leak to pressurize the water tank, taking much longer than usual to do so - and the pressure depletes faster because of it as well. So the plan is to replace the pipe from the well to the house. But first one must dig a hole. And before that can happen, snow, sleet, rain, freezing rain, and volcanic ash must stop falling from the sky, and a contractor can be induced out of his burrow long enough to see the process through.

[winddance]

hey now, volcanic ash?
you just put that in
to see if we were
paying attention
unless there is
an east coast volcano
I don't know about

[sasha]

I didn't even mention the gamma-ray bursts or radioactive meteors.

If I can't laugh at SOME aspect of this clustertruck, I might as well surrender to clinical depression.......

[winddance]

well you definitely
missed the killer drones
roaming in packs
and the acid snow

[saw]

what a nightmare...I'm on city water so don't have any suggestions...but my brother has had a few problems....once it was just the pump and another time the pressure switch.....how do you determine if there is a leak ?......

[sasha]

The pump dangles near the bottom of a 400' hole beside the house. Over the years, I've gone through 3 of them - 2 to lightning strikes, 1 to my own carelessness (forgot to change a water filter). This time the pump checked out OK. Because there was some water reaching the house, but quickly depleting, it was thought that there was a trickling leak somewhere that the pump could barely keep up with, and fell behind if there was any usage. Everything pointed to an outside leak: the weather, silt vomiting from the taps, etc. But it wasn't. "The calls are coming from inside the house!" I've got a couple of taps that have to be set just so, and a toilet that on occasion hovers right at the overflow. The trickle is inaudible, only evident by surface rippling on the water in the bowl - which I only look at when dealing with a clog. And I'd been running laundry and other housecleaning chores during the day, a perfect storm of conditions to (temporarily) run the well dry. It's since refilled, and I'm addressing the factors responsible for this unhappy affair. Still a little gun shy about flushing & washing (esp the rinsing part), but I'm back in the saddle, if a little sore in the butt - and the wallet. Seems a bit paradoxical, but money spent properly can be money saved......