Water

[Edwin]

They say that you don't miss the water until the well runs dry! On this hill where we live people drill wells hundreds of feet deep to get water! We are at 2800 feet elevation here. This is actually part of the Colville Indian Reservation. The US government opened this reservation up for homesteading in the early 1900s, and this area was divided up into 180 or 360 acre homesteading lots. The Indians would have liked to have taken that land back in the 1970s and 80s, but they never did, so there is a mixture of Indian and white man land. My grandmother was Indian, but not this tribe, so she was part of the homesteaders along with the white people even though she was Indian. In those early days very few people had electricity in this area, and almost no one had running water. They dug shallow wells where water came from spring, and used hand pitcher pumps, to pump water out of the wells. Our kids drilled a well here, but it was dry, so they spent a lot of money for nothing. Then they drilled another well, and that well had a lot of water, but it doesn't put out a lot of water, so we can only run so much water. To compensate for that we put in a holding tank of I think 1200 gallons to store extra water from pumping out of the well during the night. We brought the water pipe right to our front door, but I was putting in a cellar before bringing water into the house. We decided to bring water in the house, only to the kitchen sink for now on a temporary basis, and then we will plumb it more permanently when I get the cellar dug. We got it all hooked up, and the pump leaked. We stripped the threads holding the pump together trying to make it stop leaking. Then tonight we discovered that the pump, which had been given to us, had a crack that someone in the past had mended. My son-in-law is going to try to jb weld it, and then we will see if it will work. Tomorrow night we will probably find out if it will pump water without leaking. The pump is old, but we thought it would work. If it won't we will be looking for another pump, so we will see what happens!

[DavidM]

At least it's not the kind of pump that fits on the end of the pipe underground down where the water is. I hope that weld holds for you.

[Smiley]

That JB Weld is pretty good stuff. I once fixed an old DURO piston pump with it.Probably still working.

[Edwin]

Yes, DavidM, it is a pump several hundred feet from the holding tank, and the water gravity flows to that point, so all it needs is just a boost to get it up out of the cellar and into the house. The well is good and reliable, but it doesn't have a great refill rate, so we can only use a certain amount of water. The most critical time is when it is hot, and the animals are drinking a lot as well as the garden requiring a lot of water, but we are much better off now that we have the holding tank. As well the kids have an 88 gallon pressure tank, and when we get the cellar finished we will have an 88 gallon pressure tank. I already have the tank; I will just need to put it in. So we will have an extra 160 or so gallons in those 2 tanks. We will have to conserve a little when it gets hot outside, but we will be okay. Any other time of the year we will have lots of water, more than we actually need!

Yes, Smiley, my son-in-law believes in JB weld! The old JB Weld that someone else put on might have held, but my son-in-law pried on the housing with a large screw driver because he did not understand how it came apart, and the housing is plastic with an old crack repaired with JB Weld. Last night he coated that crack, so we are hopeful that it will hold, and give us some service at least until I get the pressure tank in. I know that operating a pump without a pressure tank is hard on the pump! It will turn on every time we draw a glass of water, but for now we have to choice, so you just do what you have to do, and hope for the best. I am doing the digging, and my son-in-law is going to help me with the wall construction in the cellar, and I am happy about that as he has worked for many years in a building supply store, and he has lots of ideas about that. His shoulders are ruined, so he can't dig, but I can, and it looks more manageable to me now than it did the previous 2 summers.