Where do you get your home’s water supply? Is it from a well, like ours? If so, you may be “well” familiar with the workings of one, and so you will not be surprised to learn that they sometimes require repairs. Such was the case with ours, and on Friday, we had Dyer Well Drilling, of Lansing, Michigan out to get ours squared away. We highly recommend them if you are in the area and need work done.
Dyer had originally installed the well when the home was built in 1993, and the technicians, Joe and Pete, were kind enough to bring us a copy of the original paperwork showing the depth of our well, what type of pump was installed in it, etc. That was really helpful to us, because we were previously unaware of how deep our well had been drilled. That information comes in handy for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is knowing what horsepower pump you should use to get the gallon per minute flow rate needed for your home and in our case, also our barn and outbuildings. More about that later.
George has been concerned about our well tank in the basement. He noticed what appeared to be a small seepage leak a couple of months ago, so he asked the technicians to check it out. Sure enough, the 90 degree elbow coming out of the tank was rusted out. We would have faced a pretty epic basement flood in the near future if that had been left in place! Unfortunately, due to the way that well tanks are constructed, that is not a serviceable part in the field. Given that the tank is 18 years old, it was time for a replacement, and so we have a nice new tank with modern constant pressure technology.
We also had an 18 year old well pump, which was only a 1/2 horsepower, 12 gallon per minute (gpm) flow rate. That’s sometimes been insufficient for us, especially in the shower. Additionally, we want to be able to use our barn hydrant (which is in the process of being replaced) so that we don’t have to haul water down from the house to the animals in the wintertime. If I had the dishwasher or washing machine going, or someone was in the shower at the time I wanted to fill animal water buckets, there would have been a duel for water pressure. Showdown at the spigot! So we had our pump replaced with a 3/4 hp, 20 gpm model, and so far, it’s working great!
We need to replace the hydrant fixture down in our barn as well as doing some plumbing work in the basement to get it working again. The old hydrant nipple (which connects the supply line to the hydrant) had rusted off and our barn started flooding a couple of years back. The hydrant pulled right out of the ground when we tried to diagnose the issue. That area of the barn has a cement slab floor, so George is digging from the other side of the wall, where the floor is still dirt, to get back down to the supply line so that we can install the new hydrant. However, this project is on hold, because of another: his car’s timing chain replacement.
In fact, I’m in the garage right now as I type this on our laptop, consulting him for information on the well project and helping where I can. This is a huge project, which he worked on most of yesterday (his need for pain meds last night is testimony) and I suspect most of the hours remaining in today will be budgeted toward it. We purchased this used vehicle about a month ago to help save money on gas, and it has done just that. But it has a whole lot of issues going on, including a bad timing chain.
See how it’s sagging in the center there? It’s not supposed to do that. It has been making a ticking time-bomb noise because of the bad chain. The garage that did the previous repairs on this car were ill-equipped, because he’s finding a lot of missing and non-standard hardware, including self-tapping screws that are not normally used in a vehicle. Boo, hiss! I hope the rest of the job goes smoothly for him. We’re just figuring out that he needs a second floor jack in order to remove the transmission, so I’d better go before he decides to try and muscle it out of there using his sternum!
Have a Happy Halloween tomorrow, for those who celebrate!
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