Or, preparing for the well
We can't just, you know, have them dig a well in the front yard. Nope, we need to take down one tree and a few branches from two more trees, move one large perennial bed, and then move a whole bunch of stuff around in the basement.
Tom got to have "fun" yesterday with the chainsaw, and I with the chipper/shredder (think Fargo without the blood).
And no, we don't have "chainsaw art" where the tree was, though it certainly does appear that way in this picture!
1:00 p.m. Update:
Hey! I recognize that gray muck! That's our clay soil! This process is rather fascinating. From what I can understand, it's dug hydraulically. Fascinating. (And yes, our house does have a tin roof. It's the one thing we'll never have to replace!)
5:00 Update: A beautiful sight.
11 comments:
So was it just the pump or did the well go dry or was it an old hand dug well and collapsed? We have a well and I am always aware of things that could go wrong and how screwed we would be. Every time there is a kink in the hose while I'm watering and the water stops flowing I'm like "oh my god the well went dry".
Hi Meredith!
Well, the well was from the 60s and, like everything here, was kind of put together with gum and toothpicks...we THINK it is the filter. Instead of putting a band-aid on a bad situation (with no guarantee that the new filter would help, and with a 40+ year old pump) we said screw it, take our money, give us a new (guaranteed) pump and well.
We're also hauling out all the old cast-iron piping in the basement. This is another line item that's over and above the price of digging/putting in the well.
Sometimes, old stuff just isn't worth it. Old houses themselves? Yes.
I am watching with great curiosity at what happens next.
We have a well as well. (hehe) It came with the house & is supposedly extraordinarily deep for better water. I've never had it tested, & that sometimes worries me, but the water seems good (albeit heavy on the minerals), doesn't smell & looks clear. We also have a reverse osmosis filter on our drinking water faucet so we mostly use that for cooking (except for pasta). I don't really worry about it drying up. Should I start??
Congrats on having water again! :)
Hank! I'm so glad you stopped by.
Artemisia, I don't know if I would worry so much that your well goes dry...especially if it's deep. Nope, it's more mechanical failure that you'd worry about with a well. Do you have a softener? Ours helps get rid of the iron spots. But in general our water is very hard. Even after going through two filters, our ice cubes always have calcium floaties in them. Minerals!
Ang, now we have to wait over 2 weeks to drink it! Yep, it gets flushed with chlorine first, then we get the water tested in about a week for bad cooties, then we can drink it. No laundry, no toilets, no washing. STILL camping!
Hydraulic? very cool!
When we had our well put in, they only went 8 feet before they hit ledge. 200+ feet of drilling through bedrock, we had water. The noise was unbelievable!
Why do you have to wait two weeks even to use it for toilets and washing? I can understand not drinking, but for the toilet? Hm.
Hi Liz
They put a LOT of bleach in the system (mainly because the pipes sat unused for a week) so we have to wait until it gets flushed through. We schedule a well test with the health department for this upcoming Friday, and once we get the okay (in about a week and a half) then we can actually drink it.
As of tomorrow (whee!) we can actually turn the water back on to the toilets. But that's it, unless I want to do a bleach load in the wash....
200'! Wow, that's a deep well. And I can only imagine what that sounded like. Ours was 60', but then again, there's that big lake a mile west of us.
I should clarify: too much bleach in the toilet water would kill those good microbes in our septic system!
That is a really cool faucet!!! Where did you find it?
MM: it is a Kohler faucet. I think you can get them nearly anywhere now...
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