No End to It

Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved.

This is the pump housing for our artesian well . . . dismantled. Early last week, our water pressure suddenly dropped — not prohibitively slow, but much less than the norm. That is not unheard-of; in a couple of years past, when the spring winds are especially bad (we regularly get 60-70+ mph gusts), we've had a drop in pressure and the seepage of sedimentation into the line. As far as we can tell, it's because the winds are so strong that they actually move the standpipe, allowing sediment in. So we initially hoped that it would turn out to be something similar, despite the lack of high winds.

Nope.

It got gradually worse, until by the end of Friday, we were at not a whole lot beyond a trickle, even at full blast. The shower was absolutely pitiful (and our showers in this place are bad enough as it is). But there was no hope of dealing with it until today.

Early this morning, before his doctor's appointment (oh, and that's a whole other thing, lemme tellya, and I was not happy to be unable to accompany him, nor with the findings, but that's for later), Wings called the guy who did the plumbing portion of the original well install. They've known each other for decades, Wings trusts him, and he promised to squeeze in a diagnostic call between other jobs.

He showed up mid-afternoon with his employee, and they got to work. We now know the source of ridiculously high electric bills, what the co-op audit couldn't seem to find.

But we had no way to tell. The submersible pump is extraordinarily quiet; I couldn't hear it even with the housing opened. The two Davids had to get their ears right over, and then they could only hear it because they knew what faint trace of sound to look for. With the housing on? Forget about it. We had no way of knowing that 1) it was on too often, for 2) too long a period of time, and 3) accomplishing too little. At the point of the above photo, that was not, of course, a done deal; there was still the possibility of water-table or other issues.

But we got lucky. More over the jump: