Adam and Heather Hayes

Well after fixing the pump for our well a few weeks ago, we decided that we didn't want it to have any reason to go out early. We had a leaky faucet out by the pump that had been very leaky for about a year now. I thought that I could just dig it out and replace it.

I soon found that it was a very, very deep pipe that I was trying to dig out of the ground. I dug for half of one day and was rather dismayed, downtrodden, and down right depressed at not having found the junction. (The hole had tons of water in it as I dug it because of the leaky faucet, so I was forced to "bail out" the water every few minutes so I could see what I was doing while I was digging. But the second day I got smarter and turned off the pump. So by the time I hit the junction I had gotten most of the water out of the hole). I called around to people in the ward that I thought might have a backhoe that they would rent. Unfortunately, nobody was home.

So I dug some more yesterday and finally found the junction. That was the good news. The bad news was that the hole was not even close to being big enough for me to bend over to work in, which explains the above pictures. So.... I ended up working in the hole upside down. (I had to come out every once in a while to get the blood back out of my head that kept turning very purple.) This was made even more interesting in that the hole filled up with some water after we took the old faucet out. So as I was hanging upside down in the hole with my head hovering above the water, I tried to tighten the pipe that was underwater, and thus invisible, with the pipe wrench.

Fortunately, I didn't drown and we have the new faucet in place. Thanks goes out to Josh who didn't let me drown and Stuart who helped me know how to replace the thing once I got the hole dug and for taking pictures so you can all laugh at me.