The Glamourous Homesteading Life

Wednesday afternoon, I found myself kneeling in a 3×5 foot shed with a 1500 watt space heater between my legs, a small LED flashlight in my teeth, and my back up against a propane powered hot water heater. The majority of the words coming from my mouth were expletives. Occasionally dashing out of the shed around to the front of our house and shouting, “TURN ON THE BATHTUB!” and running back to the shed. This continued for close to two hours. When I returned to the house my knees and back hurt.

You might ordinarily assume that my behavior was a result of mental illness, some bizarre prayer ritual, or a really quirky exercise routine. In this instance, though, I was attempting to return water service to our house.

The extraordinarily low temperatures we’ve had over the past few days (an archive of this month’s data from the weather station on our roof are available here: http://www.miscfarm.com/weather/NOAA/NOAA-2008-12.txt — note the lows on the 15th and 16th) froze a few of our pipes, including those surrounding the well pump pressure switch.

The pressure switch regulates the operation of our submersible well pump, based on the pressure that’s built up in two 75G tanks and the house pipes.  By design, when the pressure drops below 35/40 PSI, the ‘cut in’ function of the switch is triggered and the pump runs until the pressure switch reaches the ‘cut out’ pressure (~60 PSI, in our case).  It’s how our “water pressure” (at the faucet) is maintained.

Early Wednesday morning, Kat’s shower died halfway through her morning routine… it just stopped. We came to the conclusion that the water mains from the pump had frozen. We relocated a small space heater from the greenhouse to the garage, aiming it at the exposed galvanized pipe, and took off for work. We returned at 4 in the afternoon (around sunset) and my adventure ensued. After presumably thawing the pipes with a space heater, we still faced no water pressure in the house. I checked the well house and discovered some very chilly pipes, including drain valve that was frozen solid. Moved the space heater, again, this time to the well house… after the drain valve had visibly thawed, I flipped an L-shaped bail to reset the pressure switch. The encouraging snap of an electric arc and the needle moved from the ambient tank pressure (30 PSI) straight up to 70 PSI, only to drop back to 30, a second later. Another attempt with similar results.

After re-reading some information I’d found a few months back and a call to my father, who lived off-grid for 12 years and just knows this stuff, I was determined to figure it out. That’s where this post began… on my knees, with a small wrench, trying to adjust the ‘cut in’ pressure downward enough to get the pump running without hand-holding. I gave up. I spent some time with my new friend this morning, then, around noon, caved and called a service company. Late afternoon, I called to see if they were going to be able to make it. “Sure, he’s in your area and should be there in a couple hours.” Around 7:30, I talked to the service guy and he made it pretty clear that he wasn’t going to attempt to drive out into the sticks with the roads unplowed.

Thursday, we awoke to 7 inches of snow. Determined to gain running water, again, I decided to spend some more quality time with my friend, the pressure switch. There’s no way these ‘snow wimp’ service guys were going to drive out here. I was convinced that something had become lodged under the diaphragm/pressure plate and it just needed to be cleaned.

After all, I’m a smart guy and somewhat mechanically inclined, right? This is what I wanted, right? Yeah, we’re working to become self sufficient and I just need to persevere, right?

I flipped the breaker to kill the pump circuit and made my way out to the well house. I took a picture of the switch without the cover, so I’d remember the wiring. 20 minutes later, I’d pulled the wiring off the switch, drained the last couple gallons out of the well tanks, and unscrewed the switch. I brought it inside, removed the screws from the bottom, pried the switch open, and pulled out the rubber diaphragm. No gunk. Huh… there goes that theory. I reassembled it, put it back in place, reconnected it to the house wiring, flipped the circuit back on, and went back out there.

After an hour of futzing with the two adjustment screws, I had it cycling pretty reliably. The radical change in pressure had shaken loose some rust and corrosion, but hell, it’s water, right?

Punchline to the story? Sometime between the pipes freezing on Wednesday morning and this Thursday afternoon, we ran out of propane. The company that we’d contacted to refill the tank every 2 months, somehow lost our account. So, after all this hoopla, I still don’t get a hot shower.

A few things I’ve learned from this:

• The pressure switch is a really simple and elegant electo-mechanical device.
• Having the propane hot water heater and well tanks in the same shed is a poor idea. Too little ventilation and the thermocouple on the water heater will burn out. Too much and the pipes/tank/switch will freeze in the winter.
• We really could survive here with very little from the outside (no, we’re not survivalists). While it’d degrade our quality of life some, we could boil water from the creek on the wood stove.
• 3 conductor 10 gauge romex is a pain in the butt, in enclosed spaces.
• Sometimes, even paying someone to do it doesn’t mean it’s going to get done. Just do it yourself, city boy.

A couple helpful links:
http://pumpsandtanks.com/faq_page.htm
http://www.inspect-ny.com/water/Water_Pump_Control_Repair.htm