Never in my life did I think water and electricity were a good mix. TV, the movies and a humorous family story taught me that if there is a combination of a slightly damp floor and some random sparking cable the hero doesn't see death will ensue. However that is rarely the case. Take for example a cistern, a word I knew but really applied to my life this week, full of water with 220V at 30A of electricity flowing throughout. No one was hurt or killed unless you count the water supply machinery to my house. There is this new technology in my life called a "well". Luckily I don't have to pull up the bucket and rope to get water, but there are lots of other difficulties to this system. One of them is electricity, the other is a pump, a pressure tank, an overflow, a widget, a cross bleed, you get the point. There are a lot of pieces to this system and I know, in principal, nothing about them. Oh sure my degree in engineering allows me to understand them separately but as a system, it never occurred to me what a pain it can be. Read on...
There is a certain sound a toilet makes when you flush it and the tank refuses to fill up with water. You get the flush but no running water sound. I heard that gut dropping noise at 2am two nights ago. I confirmed my fear by turning around and opening the tap on the sink and hearing sputtering and a slight sigh of air. My house is not getting water! After my first cacophony of swears complete, I grabbed a flashlight and headed towards the basement. Thank god no water, but also no circuits tripped on the breaker. huh. Well its 2am and there is nothing I can do now. Back to sleep I went.
After some poking around in the morning I decided to call the past owner. There is this magical tank attached to a well system called a pressure tank. It works like this, the well pump fills this tank with a set amount of water/ pressure and then turns off. The tank feeds the house when you turn on the tap or flush the toilet. As the water goes down the pump makes up the difference. IF, for example, you don't have a working tank or it is shorted out telling the pump there is not demand no water comes out. Engineering example done, that's what happened. The previous owner told me the tank was located in the old cistern on the property. If you are unfamiliar with a cistern it is a large hole in the ground, usually lined in concrete that stores water like the pressure tank. It was an old system that the pressure tank took over. That cistern is FULL of water. So here in lies the problem, the tank, plumbing and the electricity to power this system is submerged in (calculating volume)...roughly 2,400 gallons of water!
At this point I am no well system expert but I understand something is wrong. Then I had to do something I have only done 3 times in my life since owning a home. I called a repair man. I take it as a matter of pride that I can fix most things, but I wasn't about to scuba though an 18" hole that leads who knows how far into the black earth with live wires lurking like a killer shark, or so I imagined. "we will send someone out right away" was the answer from the nice lady. 3 hours later and my pregnant wife threatening to dig a hole in the yard and they show up. Iowa time, I am learning is much slower than Chicago time.
I headed home to make sure all would go well and I found a very nice repair man changing out the pressure tank, it had a hole worn in it. His name was Rick and he had, at a minimum, a 60" belly. The cistern hole is 18" across. If my HS geometry teacher Mr. Fox (Jill?) taught me anything is that Circumference= Diameter x Pi. That makes the 18" hole 56" around. Already we are at a disadvantage. Now, you can just drop 8 feet into a concrete pit and jump back out whenever you choose so you are going to need a ladder. Ill skip the diagrams here but let me estimate that the ladder took up half of the opening space previously stated. I think you are getting the picture. Any pain or cost that was accrued with this repair was outweighed by seeing this friendly repairman Rick squeeze in and out of that hole. I watched my daughter being born and by comparison Rick had a harder time.
This got a little long but if you are still reading we have water, I learned a lot about farm plumbing (it is stupid), and we now have another mechanical system in the house that is pretty much new! Now on to painting, painting, painting and some other clean up. Stay tuned.
