Latest / Dits & Dahs / trust yourself to ask the right questions
Transcript
- Sue: Feeling the lightness of being this morning, the day after my water taps in the house ran dry. Progressively over the last few months my well has not been drawing enough water so that I can do laundry, showers. Best I could do is wash hands, and given the weather, even though we've had drenching rains, I anticipated that it was probably due to the water table being much lower than historically it has been. I've lived in this home with a well. For eighteen years and during that time my late husband and I had a very strict routine of deciding when each of us would shower and on what days we'd do laundry. And the kind of thing that once you get into it, it's no bother. It's a you know, it's a tr it's one of those traditions that it doesn't ⁓ affect negatively usually. And if there were a day that we needed to do a shower and a load of laundry, we would know to space it out. time wise to allow the well to refresh. When the well ran dry yesterday, I asked a neighbor who's been extremely helpful in my time since Gareth's death to come by and have a look. And during the chat, while he was at the electrical breakers and such, and the pressurized water ticks it while and during the chat while he was looking at the equipment, I raised the question of whether there was an automatic power cut off to the well pump, should there be A low pressure reading on the gauges. There's two pressurized water tanks that must fall within a certain range of PSI in order to function with circulating water through taps in the house. And when it's too low it shuts off the well. That's the switch I want. It means that for the past eighteen years, one of us had to be at the house in the event of that kind of emergency to manually shut off the power. And given the kind of neighborhood in which I live, it's the outreach of years of what started off as seasonal camp cabin living, where you know, doing stuff manually is fine. And you know, as people adapted to living here all year round, you know, it's just one of those routines that you get into. You just know that you gotta be mindful when the water doesn't flow to make certain you turn off that pump. So as he was having a look at everything, I asked a question about this switch, and he says, You know, I happen to have one. I had another client that decided not to install it, so it's just sitting around at my house. You let's use it. During the process of him removing the existing switch and replacing it with the new, he discovered that the inner gubbings, as my late husband used to like to refer to stuff, was all rusted, corroded, and deteriorating. into chunky bits of sediment. Now all the while that this is going on, courteously, he is running a hose from his house, two doors up, to put water in the well, so that I've got actual water. And then as he went through the process, realized that the tube that connects the gauge to the external water tanks had become clogged with sediment and therefore outputting a false signal to the well pump and therefore no water was being pumped in. Still doesn't ⁓ alter mother nature in whatever drought situation we might actually be in. Nonetheless, as of this morning, when all of that was put into use, I decided to go all in on my water usage, really extravagant view of thinking, actually, and opted for a nice shower, a load of rugs in the laundry, flushing the toilet each and every time instead of the usual if it's yellow, let it mellow vibe, and the water pressure has remained constant in the and within pumping range. I still don't have an answer with regard to the depth of the water in the well as of this time, but that will also indicate that there might be more impact of Mother Nature. But in the interim, I can continue with my conservative water usage, knowing that it's flowing much more freely and fluidly than it ever has. Having learned this, it seems like a pretty simple Relatively simple and extremely cost effective. Even if you pay a professional to do that, go into the pressure gauge line and blow it out or clean it out of sediment, that labor cost is heck of a lot cheaper than paying to extend a well and have no results to show for it. We'll see how the days go. As a person living solo, I find it extravagant to have to flush the toilet each and every time, and I certainly don't use enough water, dirty enough dishes to To justify running a dishwasher. I certainly want to be able to shower and have my laundry cleaned. So I'm sharing that as a little bit of a good moment, and if you relate and resonate with it, I'm grateful. I'm also grateful of late because a couple of more folks decided to subscribe to the channel. As of this moment, I'm at 96 YouTube subscribers, and I'm grateful that you decided to click the subscribe button. I don't ask for it, I don't ask for likes, I don't ask for comments. I will, of course, reply to every comments, and I th want everybody who feels that they wish to do any one of those things or none of those things, that they're welcome here. I'm just grateful that you find some entertaining value in listening to my mundane utterances of resolving a household problem like water access. There will be more joy to share on that situation, I'm sure. For now, we are walking in the woods. It's very dry. I certainly don't want to be over extravagantly using my water supply in the event that ⁓ the drying worsens. It was two years ago in November that a wildfire event occurred in this area. I blogged upon it every day, mindful to keep an eye on the runoff streams, the tinder underfoot out here, and of course the behavior of the animals. there's more water down here than there is up on the ridge, and so sometimes we end up with a greater diversity of sightings. Not that they don't exist here all the time, I'm just making the comment that they come down here to hydrate. The they that I refer to are deer, bears, foxes, wild turkey, of course chipmunks squirrels, birds, snakes. I encountered the first water snake that I've come up close and personal with. Thankfully it was after I found out. Looked online, it was a non toxic venom, so did not get bitten anyway. Neither did Rita. You know, it points up to the fact that how important it is to stay aware of your situation around you in the physical world. You know, I go out in this area of the woods several times a day with my dog, and have an experience as I'm having now, which is mostly benign. We're not encountering any critters and it's fairly calm and peaceful as it usually is, but it can get exciting pretty quick nonetheless. And it's the allegory that I make to be an aware of your situations with recognizing that we can get blinded by the traditions that we keep and not see what's really going on around us because we're unable to break ourselves free of those routines long enough to appreciate that we might be suffering some abuse of some kind. ⁓ we've always done it this way. No, no, no. We d no, we don't want you to innovate. We don't want you to change the way we do things. Or yeah, I don't know. Why would you want to change the status quo? You know, we've been together for ages. Sometimes we have to break those traditions and routines because we no longer resonate with what it was we started with them to begin with. That's okay. Accepting change, I consider change isn't change as much as it is clarity. That the sun's coming out. I guess that's a sign of confirmation. If you have unwillingness to change, you're gonna find yourself in situations that keep repeating themselves, getting worse and worse with the results at a point where you might have to change because the infrastructure all around you is torn down. And you're the last person in it. Kinda like with my well situation. During the time that my husband and I were together in the house, as handy as my husband was, with a lot of different household skills, plumbing, electricity, woodworking, certainly, etc. He never once, nor did I even think, to have the equipment looked at. We accepted it, given the the nature around us. So it was never a a research project. When the first well pump died, we knew it immediately because all of a sudden the flow of water shut off. He pulled it and replaced it. And so when the pump returned to the level of flow that we had previously encountered, we didn't question it. That was the end of it. We fixed the situation. Had it not been for me asking the question of is there such a thing as a switch that will, when a low pressure is re and read, shut off the pump? Cut the power to the pump. And the answer is yes. You know, it's not that I'm not here 99% of the time either. And it won't prevent the pipes freezing in the winter should the well pump Cut off, but there will be less water in the pipe, so hopefully the pipes won't burst as badly. We'll cross that bridge. Regardless, I am grateful for having the presence of mind to ask the question that actually prompted the solution. I'm more than happy to turn the power to the well on manually after it's automatically shut off. Absolutely. There's no point in over-automating my life with something that is basically an analog event. Thank you all for. peeping in on the mundane stuff that I post. I'm grateful, and if it resonates with you and you feel guided to do so, let me know. No worries. The underlying stress of not having water permeates through every aspect of your everyday life. So I'm grateful that it was resolved. At least as far as I know so far. Sometimes little blips of information come to you from the universe and you ask questions that you didn't know needed to have an answer, and that the answer was at hand. It's a beautiful thing. Thanks for listening. I appreciate you.