Adam and Heather Hayes

Well, well, well, what a week we've had. 

I woke up on Tuesday and found that we had no water. I was worried that our pressure tank had finally given up and that I'd find a few feet of water in the basement. Fortunately that was not the case.

After checking breakers and fuses and getting some advice from Stuart as to which well pump service company to use, we had Forman Pump come out and check out our system. They checked the "quick fix stuff" first, but it wasn't the cheap stuff that was broken. After pulling over a hundred feet of pipe out of the ground we found that our 11 year old pump had gone out (normal life span of a pump is 12-15 years from what the experts told me) So we replaced the pipe and pump and dropped the pump down another few feet because the water table was lower for this time of year.

Well, unfortunately that wasn't the end of our problems. We powered up the pump and things were good, but we had awful water pressure. Dropping the pump meant putting it closer to the bottom and closer to the dirt/silt/stuff that resides at the bottom of the well. That plugged up our filter in quite a hurry, but it was probably a good thing that it did, because it made me look into the pressure tank a little more than I had.

I decide that it would probably be good to pressurize the tank again. So, I called my dad and he came over with a couple of tanks of air. We pressurized the pressure tank (I now know how to do it properly) and everything works great. We've never had this good of water pressure. I really think that our pressure tank hadn't been doing its job for a while now (it is a bladderless tank and I think the air was all but gone in it). I think that contributed to our early pump failure.

At least now I know what to look for as signs to re-pressurize the system, and understand a little better how a well pump works.

On the down side I have one heck of a sunburn that looks pretty funny. Hopefully it will have faded a bit by the time we bless Clara in a couple of weeks.