Oh Well

Hope It's Just the Deep Freeze

Some of you may recall I had issues with my barn pump/well over the summer. All was repaired and everything's been working properly until....

Tonight.

The system is a gravity drain so as long as the hose in the barn is disconnected, the water runs back down the line to the well, draining the spigot in the barn. So that's not a problem. And the spigot itself worked just fine. No water came out.

I am guessing the valve and pipes in the well pit itself froze up. They had been buried under a foot or so of dirt last year, much to my surprise. I thought they were just insulated with bags of straw and leaves, but apparently a groundhog had excavated and buried everything in sand. My plumber dug it all up, then reburied all but the top pipe and a valve...I think. If so, that's probably frozen.  I should have investigated when it was warmer and put some insulation in there, but, of course, I didn't. Chalk another failure up to recovering from a broken hip.

If I'm right and that's all that's wrong, I can remedy it. Tomorrow, in the daylight, I will put an electric heater in the well pit to thaw things out. Then, I'll put the insulation in.  I have to run and extension cord to the well from the barn across the paddock, so that's just a little worry with the Boys out there but I may have some PVC pipes I can run the cord through.

Meanwhile, I had to lug water buckets from the kitchen sink out to the barn. I used the 5 gallon buckets so they were pretty heavy. It's maybe 100 ft from house to barn, and it wore me out. The fact that I had also made three trips to my hay farmer to get 30 bales of hay--10 at a time in the Durango--unloaded and stacked that didn't help.  I should be in better shape, but I'm not, so it was a lot of work.
If the well doesn't work, I guess my exercise level will be elevated pretty quickly.

I'm apparently on a forced fitness program whether I want to be or not.  *S*

There's plenty of water in the lake across the road. Frozen too.