1 March 2010 Well well well

1 March 2010 Well well well


When you think things are going well, be on guard.

It does not do to let your guard down, ever!

Gloria told me Friday that the shower temperature was hard to regulate. Neither of us noticed it Saturday or yesterday. This morning I had problems regulating the temperature and the flow rate was erratic. In addition, the water from the faucets was the dirty brown water we have come to know indicates some sort of problem. The color is largely due to the iron content in the well water. The turbidity is due to the shallow nature of our well and the somewhat questionable nature of the well itself. Both mean expense.

I called the well company that has been our best source of help with this well and asked for a service call tomorrow. If we are lucky, we may get by with a new pressure switch and gauge. Of course, there will be a service call and labor charge. Since any repairs will involve crawling under the house on a cold and probably snowy day, working in the crawl space , they are certainly going to be performing work that we are neither able to do nor desire to perform; we will trade off fees for service. The good side of the situation is that both Gloria and I trust the company and its employees to advise us honestly and to perform any work capably and competently.

There is an unanswered question about whether or not out current practice of leaving a faucet dripping is causing the flow variation. We’ll ask when the work crew gets here. If it is, then we will need to find some other means of preventing our out-door filters from freezing.

We also need to find another load of wood to burn for the next two months. I found a note offering hard wood, delivered and stacked, at a reasonable price last Wednesday. I’ve been trying to contact the seller at the phone number on the note to buy some wood but haven’t been able to connect. If I can’t get him today, I’ll have to find another source to deliver this week. I have some remaining segments of ash and poplar in the front yard that can be split, cut to length, and burned. But the act of splitting those segments, cut too long by the company that took the trees down, will be incredibly painful hammer and wedge work followed by much lifting and carrying to the hydraulic splitter, followed by cutting to length, followed by more lifting and carrying. It can be done but it will leave me unable to lift my hands above my waist for a week. It also requires that I have a period of dry weather in which to work.

The well water tastes great when all the systems are working. Given the amount of snow this winter we shouldn’t need to worry about well depletion. What we do have to worry about is the actions, once again, of the perpetual problem neighbor across the street. In need of money, he has decided to sell part of his land. Given the zoning and the region, the most likely buyers would be people wanting to park a mobile home on the land. This and the utility situation will create another problem for us.

There is no municipal water service to those parcels of land. Anyone wanting to live there would either need to run water lines or sink a well. Drilling a new well might disturb ours. Worse, by far, is the sewage situation. Anyone building will have to put in a septic tank or settling lagoon. Either will lie uphill of our well and most likely contaminate our well. We need to find out what restrictions exist concerning how close new construction of leach fields can be to existing wells.

This is probably going to wind up becoming a legal problem if anyone does buy the land. If so, we would demand that whoever builds or develops pays to run municipal water to our house and plumb it all in. That is not an unreasonable request if their construction ruins our well.

If the well folks come out tomorrow we’ll try to get some input from them about how much risk we would be incurring. Obviously it will depend upon the types of soil and how the strata lie beneath the surface. Also a factor that may help us is Cassi Creek, flowing from the Cherokee National Forest which borders our property. Fingers crossed.

The best possible solution would be for no one to buy his land. We can hope.

Well, well, well, Who’s that drilling?

Well, well, well, off my land.

Well, well, well, creek’s off limits

Water is flowing all under the land.

Well, well, well!