Well repairs = Day off!

Well, I didn't start out intending to take the day off, but it ended up turning out that way.

When Cathy got up this morning she noticed right away that the water was not working. Our pressure tank's bladder has been out for a few months and I had been adding air to it and it was needing it again because the water had started surging, so I immediately assumed that the pump had gone out due to the constant on/off cycles which aren't good for the pump. That wasn't good as the pump is 176' deep and is pretty expensive to replace.

I got dressed and walked out to the well house and quickly discovered that the pump was still working. The well house was soaked and there was water everywhere! I walked up to it to turn the water off and lost one of my shoes in the mud!

We had some high winds during the night and the well house is simply covered with some plywood and it had blown around in the past so I had put a large piece of lumber on top of the plywood to keep it from blowing. Well, the wind was strong enough to still blow the plywood up, and when it did, the large piece of lumber dropped down into the well house and landed right on the only PVC pipe and cracked it, resulting in an extended soaking of everything. Not sure when it happened, but it had obviously been that way for several hours.

Well, (pun intended ;-) ) I decided that this would be a good opportunity to go ahead and replace the pressure tank instead of just fixing the broken PVC plumbing so I went into town and picked up a pressure tank and the fittings that I thought I would need.

The old tank was 10 years old, and the galvanized and copper pipes were pretty rusted together. I messed around with it for a bit and it was going to be more work than I expected, so I decided to just call and get someone to come fix it for me. I decided if they would do it for $200, I would just let them it, and I would go on to work. I called a few guys and found one guy that could get to it today but he wanted $250. I just couldn't bring myself to pay $250 for something that I knew I could do. It was around 10:00 by this time so I figured I could get it fixed and still get to work by 1:00 and get a 1/2 day in, right? Wrong!

I did get everything put back together by 1:30 (after another trip to the hardware store) and ate lunch and waited for the glue to dry. I took a picture of the completed repair job before I went in for lunch.
I still thought I might make it in to the office in time to get some work done, but when I went back out and turned the pump on, there was a leak! :-(

One more trip to the hardware store and I had unions on both ends. The problem with the way the way these tanks are traditionally plumbed is that you have to cut the PVC on both ends and then screw the galvanized and copper fittings out. The leak was where the T goes into the bottom of the pressure tank so I had to take everything back apart, and I wasn't as confident that it wouldn't leak as I was the first time, so I wanted to be able to take it back apart without having to cut and glue if there was a next time. Well the 2nd time it went back together I still had a leak where the T goes into the bottom of the pressure tank so I was VERY thankful for the unions this time. The T that I was using was from the old tank and it is copper. The female fitting on the pressure tank is plastic so I was afraid that I was going to break it by over tightening and I had actually under tightened it the first 2 tries. I tightened it all the way up on the 3rd try and it didn't leak!

Here's a picture of the completed project with unions on both ends.

Lots of narrative and not many pictures, but I forgot to take a picture of the old tank before I pulled everything apart. I did take a picture of where the male PVC adapter broke off inside the female galvanized elbow on the top of the well casing when the piece of lumber fell on it, but it didn't turn out very good. I ended up having to take a hack saw blade and cut slices out of the broken PVC inside the female galvanized elbow to get it out.

I actually still have a tiny leak right where the union is on the far right side of the pictures, but I'm going to have to buy another union in order to fix it because it is in the slip connection. I tried to pull it apart but it had already set and I was afraid it was going to break before coming apart. It should only take a few minutes to fix that and the water is back up and running so I'll probably do that this weekend.

I got everything done around 4:30 so I decided it was too late to go in to the office by then.

So that was my day today! In retrospect I probably should have just paid the $250 to have it installed and gone on to work. April 2nd isn't exactly a slow day for a CPA, but I should be able to catch back up. I do get a lot of satisfaction out of doing repairs and stuff on my own. I think I'll spend that $250 on something else instead!

That's it for now. Nathan