Adventures in Rural Living

I know this is a bit off topic but everything is connected when you're living on the Land. Last Saturday we were watering both gardens when Rick ran out of water pressure! Now, that's not supposed to happen so he quickly ran to the well house. The pressure pump was running so he turned off the breaker and looked in the cistern. It was DRY!!! That's not supposed to happen either. The cistern is a 3000 gallon one. We pump from the well into the cistern and then take water from there. Our solar well pump only pumps about 3 to 5 gallons a minute so doing it this way allows us to do more watering and so far it's worked great. Obviously the well pump wasn't working. What a drag!!!

We called a friend who's an electrician to come check the electrical side because it looked like the pump wasn't getting power. What Samuel found was that there's a breaker in the well house that seemed to be fried! He said that sometimes lightening strikes will blow out a well pump. Lightening strikes???? A week and a half earlier we HAD a lighten strike on the property. In fact we were outside at the time and it hit so close that both of us got hit by it! Neither of us was hurt - obviously - but at the time it sort of freaked us out - needless to say.

So Monday Rick was on the phone to one person or another trying to track down information and, low and behold, the pump folks said they thought it was lightening also. Who knew! Seems it's not that uncommon. But we were still without water. Good neighbors (thanks Abel and Sarah!) let us fill up water jugs to get us by. We called the well guy - the good news was that he could help us - the bad news was that he was on a job and wouldn't be available for a week! Sooooo - we called a water hauler and had him bring us 1000 gallons for the cistern. He came today. But was the pressure pump going to be OK? We've had problems with them before. It was a bit tense for a while once we turned it back on because it didn't look like pressure was building up in the pressure tank - the gauge wasn't registering any pressure! Oh darn!!!! But wait - then the pump went off. Did that mean that the gauge wasn't working? Did it get fried, too? We turned on all the faucets and while they spit and sputtered a bit, before too long water was flowing smoothly. The pressure pump went back on and then off again so it DOES seem to be working fine - thank goodness!!!! The water hauler also said this lightening stuff was common! I think this is definitely a chapter for "Rural Living for Dummies"!!!

We're getting another 1000 gallons more of water on Saturday that will allow us to water the gardens - assuming we don't get any rain. The rain has done a good job of missing us lately. So we're back on track. Hopefully that means I'll get a good night's sleep tonight and not wake up at 4 am stressing. A shower never felt so good!

And, oh yea, I did manage to get some work done on the foundation. Back to it tomorrow.