Mountain Living - Water Part IX

The water heater is finally working again.

No, you haven't missed any earlier articles about the problem. I've been pretty busy of late, as this came to light as I was getting ready to go back to work.

We have an all electric house, so (of course) our water heater is electric. Years ago we replaced a standard unit with a non-metallic one, as that keeps the sulphur bacteria from growing in the tank. I like that choice, but may get a tankless unit later. Time will tell.

In any event, things got interesting with the water heater a couple of weeks ago. It stopped producing hot water, and eventually I found that it was tripping the circuit breaker at odd intervals.

Eventually I determined that one thermostat was bad, as it was only passing 120 volts (instead of 240) to the lower heating element. I ordered replacement thermostats - both upper and lower - installed them, and found that didn't solve things. Additional research convinced me that the lower heating element was also bad and shorting out. Then my friend Alan figured out that the new upper thermostat I'd been sent was bad too.

While I waited for parts to arrive I disconnected the lower heating element to avoid the short, used one of the broken upper thermostats, and turned the water heater on with the circuit breaker only when we needed it. That wasn't exactly an approved - or convenient - solution, but it worked. Thankfully we didn't have to do it for long.

In the end - two heating elements and a replacement for the replacement thermostat later - I've finally got it working properly. It turnst out the lower heating element had corroded to the point that it had sheared off entirely inside the tank. That caused the short that tripped the breaker, so all the obvious failures are explained now.

A less than obvious thing is also explained. For some time we had a lot of air in the hot water lines. I couldn't figure out why that was, but now I know that the broken heating element was turning water into hydrogen and oxygen gas right there inside the tank. Exciting, eh?

At this point I can assure you that a functioning water heater is a very good thing, and I'm glad to finally have one again.

Mountain Living - Water Part VIII

The well is giving out. Two years of low rainfall has reduced production such that the pump runs for just a few seconds before shutting off again. I just increased the recovery time between pump runs to see if that helps things, but I doubt it. Talking to my neighbors, it seems that many wells in the area are going dry. We've not had this happen before with our well, but there's a first time fore everything.

Yesterday I had 3800 gallons of water delivered to our tanks, and it will probably require several deliveries before any rain - whenever that begins in earnest - starts to improve our well's output. It will be interesting to see how long that takes.

I may have mentioned this before, but those of you considering a rural lifestyle take note: maintaining your own water supply is not simple, inexpensive, nor for the faint of heart. It's much nicer if you can just open the tap and get clean water.

Mountain Living - Water Part VII

The water purification equipment is installed. It took most of the day, yesterday, but it's all in place and seems to be working.

Now we give it all a few days to settle in and get the last of the gunk water out of the lines. At that point I'll be able to report more about the experience. Thus far, things are fine, but it's still a bit hard to tell. And we still need test results back to confirm what things are doing in terms of water quality.

What I know is that the well is still not producing quite enough water, and now we'll be burning some water backwashing on the new filter and softener, but it's necessary. It will be interesting to watch the water level in the tanks during the coming days,

More when we know it.

Mountain Living - Water Part VI

The numbers are in and a date is picked. We should have people working on our water system next Monday.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Mountain Living - Water Part V

Today we had the water purification expert out to our home. We reviewed the nature of the existing system and went over the equipment we need. Based on a conversation yesterday morning and the follow on today, the cost has come down somewhat. Instead of needing $6000 worth of stuff, we've reduced it to something like $5500. Based on what I think we're getting, it's actually pretty good deal.

The final quote isn't ready just yet. We need to get a question answered from the manufacturer of one thing and make a final determination on where things will be installed, but we're pretty close.

Thankfully the expert thinks he can do a lot for the quality of our water and make us happy with it again. The installation sounds really good on a number of levels too, including things like getting chlorinated water into all the lines in the house to kill off any bugs that are in them now.

The equipment to be installed includes:

1. A water filter system that removes sediment, turbidity, iron, and hydrogen-sulfide gas
2. A water softener to remove dissolved minerals
3. A reverse osmosis unit to purify drinking water

It's a ton of stuff, but the UV system that was originally recommended has been removed, and installation isn't as hard as it could have been.

I should know more early next week. At this point I just want to get this done. Now. Or Yesterday.

Mountain Living - Water Part IV

So we're finally getting somewhere on the water situation, but just where isn't entirely clear yet. The water purification people we've been talking to just called me back with a $6000 proposal for purification equipment. It's a lot of stuff, and I'm not yet sure we'd need it all, but it's huge. They're sending me the details so we can review them next week.

We could truck in a LOT of water for that much money, but then again, trucked in water will only get more expensive, and this is a worst case system, built to bullet proof the water against most anything. We have a lot of research to do and questions to get answered before we say "yes" to this, as you might expect.

As it happens we also got the bill for all the well work today, Another $1800. Ouch.

I've said it before: those of you on city water should consider yourselves very, very lucky.

Mountain Living - Too Much Fruit

Yes, that's a bathtub full of pears.

We have this not-so-little problem of a fruit loving Siberian Husky and no other place to keep the mounds of fruit we've harvested away from him.

Truthfully, the problem is a bit bigger than that. Or property has about seven very old pear trees on it and as with all farming, they all ripen at once. (Actually, with pears, they don't ripen on the tree. They only ripen after you harvest them. They started falling off the trees a couple of weeks ago, but only yesterday did Anne finish - mostly - the harvest.) It was a good pear year.

And that isn't all of them. There's a box full that isn't pictured, and we've already canned 15 quarts of pear sauce. (IMHO pear sauce is much better than apple sauce. If you get the chance, try some.) If we'd actually harvested them all at the same time and just put them directly into the tub in the guest bath, it would have been full. To the brim.

Now we wait. They must ripen a bit before we make more pear sauce. And as with all fruit they will nearly all ripen at the same time, so we'll be canning another four gallons of the stuff all too soon. Assuming we have that many jars.

Aside: why is it called "canning" if you put whatever you're preserving into jars? Dumb name.

We've already had the apricot inundation for 2008, and we only have a couple of small trees. The plum inundation is probably still coming, but I haven't checked. That'll be followed by the apple inundation, but those we mostly ignore. They're small granny smith type green apples that the deer love but we don't like so much. Of course none of that includes what Anne is growing in the garden.

Wish us luck getting all those pears processed!

Mountain Living - Water Part III.I

That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

If that's true, our water is going to turn me into King Kong.

It stinks. Badly. Some of it is still PVC cement volatiles from the repair I did just after getting home. And some of it might be related to the acid treatment of the well too, but I doubt it. At this point, all I know is it stinks and we need help.

This morning I sent samples off to a company that makes water purification equipment to be tested and see what we need. At the moment, I'll take just about anything if it will make the water smell and taste better. We're buying water to drink, of course, but we can't avoid our well water entirely.

Hopefully we'll get answers soon.

Mountain Living - Green Waste Disposal

We live on a couple of acres of land. It's mostly very old pear orchard, so old the trees are slowly dying despite our care. We have redwoods along the street side, and a mix of things - mostly oaks - scattered about and along the drainage ditch the real estate listing for the house amusingly called a "seasonal creek".

What do you do with that much land? Mostly you mow it to keep the weeds down. That's it. Sometimes my wife plants a new tree to replace a dead one, or to fill in a space she thought was empty. Mowing around trees is a pain - particularly with a 400 pound high weed mower - so I dislike the new tree thing, but I don't get a vote.

In addition to mowing, however, we toss our green waste out there. We're don't throw anything nasty out - we don't want rats - but vegetable trimmings and the like do get tossed out into the orchard. A day or two in the sun makes most of it dry up and disappear. The rest is eaten by the deer or turned into mulch by the mower.

Nothing about this is offensive. Tonight, for example, it was some onion skins and the trimmed bits of a few peppers. I suspect most of those living up here do the same sort of thing. Mother nature will break this stuff down quickly and it saves room in the garbage. We have a friend - who will remain nameless - who readily admits this behavior, but she's also said she will never be allowed to live in town again. She's thrown whole pumpkins off her deck.

But I digress, and believe it or not there is a point to this story.

About a month ago we discovered that our vegetable peeler was missing. That's not a normal thing to have go on walkabout, and given the introduction you've probably already figured out what happened. We weren't that smart.

We checked all over the kitchen and found nothing. Eventually we gave up, and just yesterday Anne bought two new peelers. (We're going to be processing pears soon, and two peelers will make that go faster.)

This morning I did some repair work on my weed whacker and headed out into the yard to take down the tall grass on the slope near the house. Some time after starting I found the vegetable peeler laying on the ground, in perfect condition, having been thrown out there who knows how long ago.

The usual greet waste disposal event goes like this: the trimmings are gathered on a cutting board or in some vessel, taken out onto the deck, and tossed over the railing. Apparently someone - almost certainly me - piled lettuce trimmings or something on the cutting board, covering the peeler and rendering invisible, and tossed it out into the night.

Now we own three OXO vegetable peelers, a lifetime supply if I don't throw them away again.

Mountain Living - Water Part III

The next update in the water saga, but first, a recap. It's been two weeks since the last post on this topic.

You'll recall that our water quality was bad, and that the production from our reverse osmosis unit dropped off. That started the cascade of events that lead to the discovery of a low water level in the tanks and no water being pumped into the tank from the well. Then we found the blowout in the well pipe, the slime all over the well, and then we left on vacation with the well disassembled and the well pro fixing it the next day after the acid treatment was done. Remember all that?

So we actually got home on Wednesday, but the story resumes about 2.5 hours before we got home. My cell phone rang with the news - from my friend Alan who'd been watching the place and watering the garden - that he'd found a water leak down by the tank. He thought it was in the line to the garden and shut it off. OK, not a big deal. I can fix that in a day or a week or whatever, so we proceeded on home and I didn't bother to run right out and examine things.

That changed when Anne determined we had no water in the house at all.

Meandering down to the tank I saw that Alan had shut off the water to the entire house. OK, I turned it back on and immediately heard the hissing of a small leak nearby, in a joint in the main line to the house. What to do? Obviously we start by turning it back off again and pondering the options. Fixing it in short order - before the hardware stores close - seemed the best choice.

So I got out a shovel and dug up the area around the leak - so I could get at it and see what needed fixing. Then I rooted around in my stash of PVC pipe fittings to see if I already had the right parts. Fortunately, I did. 45 minutes later I've cut out the damaged fitting, replaced it, and have the water back on. All good.

The next task is to flush all the lines to the house, since whenever we lose water pressure the gunk on the inside of the lines comes loose and we get filthy brown water for a while. Not fun, but relatively simple. Except for the toilet fill valve that is now partially plugged with that gunk, but I've hated that valve ever since I installed it some time back and now I've got a reason to replace it real soon.

At this point there is just one little detail I've left out. While working around the tank I noted that we had a new pump controller. It had been changed while we were gone. That's odd. Why would that be? The well pro must have found something was wrong with the one we had and replaced it. Not good, but I'll call him and find out the specifics as soon as I get a chance.

This morning he told me he was coming out today to make sure things were still working right. Interesting. Worrisome, but interesting. When he arrived a while later we talked. Putting the pump back into the well was no problem, but when he started things up, the controller wasn't shutting the pump off properly. Not wanting to burn it out, he'd installed a new one, but it had taken several visits and some time to properly calibrate it to shut off the pump at the right time.

Apparently, in addition to everything else, the water production from the well is dropping off. That's why it took so long to calibrate the controller - waiting for the well to recharge. Not good, but we are in the second year in a row of low rainfall, so not entirely unexpected.

All this extra work does not bode well for the bill, but water is a necessity, and even with a big bill it will be cheaper than trucking water up here all the time. As it happens the damaged pump controller has been sent off to the manufacturer. If they decide it was their problem, they might send me a new replacement, and that would take that cost off the bill. I'm not counting on that outcome, but we'll see.

The good news is that the well is slowly catching up again - the water level in the tank is rising - now that the pipe is repaired and the pump is working. At the current rate it will take a while, but it is catching up.

And that's where we stand. Still no samples sent off for testing. Still no idea what I will be doing about filtration. Nadda. That'll all have to wait for next week. At least, I hope nothing comes up to interfere with that plan.

With that, the three of you tracking this story are now as up to date as I can make you. Stay tuned, or keep those RSS readers going, and I'll get you more when I can.

Mountain Living - Water Part II

Here we go with the next installment of the well water saga...

The well pro arrived today to acid treat the well. What's that, I hear you ask?

You may recall from an earlier post that there was a lot of iron and sulphur bacteria in the well. One way to kill that off - as well as to remove some kinds of mineral buildup inside the well and thus possibly increase water production - is to pour a lot of acid into the well. In this case he used 10 gallons of a solution that was labelled as containing two different kinds of acid. In addition, he put something like 40 pounds of dry ice down there too. That froths up the acid and water, moving things around, killing off more buggies, and removing more mineral gunk.

That acid micture sits down in the well for 24 hours doing it's job. Then the well pro comes back tomorrow, reinstalls the pump, and pumps out all (roughly) 200 gallons of water, acid and muck from the well. That stuff just gets dumped out on the ground. Then things are hooked back up as usual and the fresh water flowing into the well is pumped into my holding tanks.

The news from the well pro was pretty good. The old well pump tested out reasonably well. It's a bit less efficient than a new pump, but that's from a couple of years of use pumping water and slime up a pipe 380 feet long. So we don't need a new pump. What we have can be reinstalled, and a great cost savings.

Some things will change, though. First, the well pro tells me that it is possible the check valve built into the pump trapped an air bubble inside it. If that happened, the pump might have run and heated up without moving any water. That would not be good, since the moving water is the coolant for the pump. To get around that possibility, he's going to disable the check valve. If any bubbles get in there, they'll be able to rise up the pipe and thus get away from the pump to a place they can do no harm.

In addition, he's going to replace the bottom 40 feet of 1" PVC with 1.25" PVC. He will install a check valve between those two sections - to replace the disabled one in the pump - and a bell reducer above them to adapt back to the 1" PVC coming the rest of the way up the well. That should make for better flow out of the pump, and heavier (sturdier) pipe down at the bottom of the well.

With luck, all of that happens tomorrow while we're away. The well pro will call when he's done, and I'll update you on that later.

Assuming all of that happens as planned, it will get water flowing back into our holding tanks. But we still have to deal with all the filtration equipment issues, and they won't get worked again until mid to late August.

So look for Mountain Living - Water Part III in a few weeks. In the meantime, remember that we're travelling and I won't have much internet access, so take care and look for updates at longer intervals until we get back.

Mountain Living - Water Part I.V

Aside: I have no idea how the Romans would have noted 1.5. Would it have been I.V as I've done it? No clue. Anyway...

Just talked to the well pro and he (obviously) didn't get here today. As he kind of expected, the job today went long, and he didn't get back to my pump testing.

He promises he will have it fixed and installed before Wednesday, though, so the next water update is delayed until he gets the work done, and possibly longer. I've got a two week vacation coming up soon as well that may delay things. If I have a computer that works while I'm gone I might be able to post something, but if not, this will be a quiet blog until I get back. Many of you - if there are many of you reading this - will probably appreciate that.

Mountain Living - Water Part I

A couple of weeks ago we noted that our RO (reverse osmosis) drinking water system wasn't keeping up with usage. That seemed odd, as we don't use that much, so I checked it out and could find nothing obviously wrong.

So I called the (major) manufacturer - who will remain nameless to avoid lawsuits - and asked the cost of a replacement membrane. I'd changed out all the pre and post filters earlier this year, so it could only be the membrane, right? Actually, no. It was replaced only 6 months or so earlier, and it shouldn't need replacement either. Anyway, a new membrane is about $170. Ouch. Something that's supposed to last 4-5 years is dying in 18 months, and I need to spend that much to replace it?

Asking why it is dying so soon I get "this is an old unit and they have an expected lifespan of 10 - 15 years." Excuse me? I replace everything that can be replaced regularly and the only things left - mostly a plastic housing - still has a limited lifespan?

So I decide to let the (major) manufacturer send a sales guy out to look it over, see what he thinks, and make recommendations. That's free. Sending a service technician out costs well over $100 just to get him to the door.

The sales guy arrives, looks things over, tests the water for total dissolved solids and says "Wow. That's really bad." Turns out that the RO system is still emitting water with TDS readings of over 400. My regular kitchen tap is a bit over 500, so the RO unit is really trashed. The water isn't that hard either - no softener needed.

The upshot is that our turbidity filter is no longer working. It's made by the same company and needs to be replaced, and was installed when the RO unit was installed, back in 1993. Cost is $2400, but that's the "special deal" they're offering this month only. Grrr. I hate marketing crap like that. Fine, I tell him to let me look around, ponder and that I'll get back to you.

Next step: find a local vendor that sells filtration equipment from other manufacturers. I talk to a nice lady in a nearby town who wants to get samples of my water to test so they know what needs to be done to it. I can do that, and I do, but in the process I find I cannot get my well pump to produce water. That means I cannot give her a sample straight from the well itself, but more importantly it may mean the well pump isn't working for some reason, and that would be bad. The worst threat is the well could have run dry, but other - more mechanical - issues are easily possible as well. Eventually I put on my rose colored glasses and assume it's because the well had just stopped running and had to recover. (It's never that, but it sounds good, right?)

The nice lady calls me back a day or two later and says that I was right, our TDS is very high, and it's not very hard. Interestingly, her equipment vendor wants to test the water himself because he needs answers to questions she can't give him. That's fine, but I need more samples, including water straight from the well.

I try to get that sample again, but it's still not working. Now I have to debug things. The level in the tanks is down, but not far, so whatever is going on just started. I check power coming out of the contactor and it works. Power goes into the pump controller too. At that point I'm out of my depth. When it goes into solid state electronics, it's time to call the pro.

The pro arrived today and quickly discovered that the pump is actually running, but nothing is coming out. That means we have to pull the pump out of the well to find out what is going on. 380 feet of one inch PVC pipe later, we find this:



The top of the pump housing is at the bottom of the picture. The pipe comes out and immediately you see distortion and bending. Inside the black rubber torque arrestor farther up you'll see more of the same, but this time with a big hole in it.

Something heated up the pipe and water so much that the pipe got weak and the water blew a big hole in it. That's bad.

What might cause things to heat up like that? Well, one possibility is this:



That gooey stuff next to the well head seal is slime from the pipes. There was a lot of it, and my pump guy says it's mostly iron bacteria of some sort. It may have clogged the pump to the point that it was pumping less water and heating up the water in the well. If it got hot enough, the blown out PVC could result.

I'm really glad we noted this when we did. Had I not looked it could have continued running - since the pump was running continuously since the blowout - and driven our power bill through the roof. As it is, we have no idea how long the problem was going on. It might have been running for a week before we did anything about it.

And now, I have to pause the tale. Thus far, I don't know what happens beyond that point. The pump went back to the shop with the well pro, who will examine and clean it looking for the issue that heated things up. In addition, he will bench test it to see what kind of shape it's in. We'll probably acid treat the well to kill some of the bacteria living in it, and we'll need to replace that last 20 feet of pipe, of course. But the water sample from the well can't be taken until all that is done, so I still don't know what we need for water treatment equipment from my local supplier, and I have to get that done before I bother doing anything about fixing or replacing the RO unit.

Those of you getting city water, consider yourselves lucky. Someone else deals with all this for you, and you pay a few dollars a month. I'm pretty sure that amortized over all the years we've lived here, I pay a LOT more for a gallon of tap water than most city dwellers.