Progress

Well, we are about 6K into our 10K renovation/repair budget and are just barely making a dent in what we need to do, but what we've done so far has been important to the house, and both things we've done so far needed to happen while we were not living there, since they are the kinds of things that generally make people flee to a hotel for a couple of days. So we've stayed here in the rental and let the guys work before we move in.

The first thing was replacing the well pump and casing. We knew there was an issue there, and negotiated a significant price reduction because of it, so it was the first thing we set about fixing once the property became ours. Country property is only as good as the well it's on, and this well needed work. Not for lack of water -- there's plenty of that -- but the pump was 22 years old, the casing was metal and was gradually disintegrating and instead of fixing it, the previous owners had instead installed no less than three filters running into the house in order to keep the metal flakes from the pipe from entering the household plumbing.

If your house uses no less than three kinds of water filters, plus one at the well head, you might have a well casing problem, not a water quality one.

It was also only pumping a meager seven gallons per minute, pitiful by even California drought standards. Work on a well is a can you can kick down the road, but at your own risk. Generally well pumps like to give out at the start of three-day weekends, at the hottest time of the year....usually when you have houseguests about to arrive. Life is stressful enough without adding that to the mix.

And so the well guys showed up last week, replaced the aged pump and changed out the metal casings for heavy-duty PVC, and the result was....sparkling clean water, coming in at the rate of 27.5 gallons per minute. That's what I'm talking about, Oregon! Bring on the water! That's almost a 400 percent increase from what it had been at. It makes me want to wash the car in the driveway just thinking about it.

The second thing we did was have the yellowed, too-varnished floors stripped and refinished with a clear coat, using a German product designed NOT to yellow over time. What a difference THAT made! See below. It looks like the floors can breathe again.

Floors before. OK if you're a fan of orange.

Floor after! (Excuse the blue tape the guys put on to protect the carpet.)

The window guys, the locksmith, the general contractor, and the garage door guy have all come over and done their respective craft. And I bought five bare-root roses, so I'll spend some time getting them in the ground soon. Pics to come.

Like most challenging things, it will be worth it in the end. And doing it this way is allowing us to get to know the house gradually, before we move everything in. 

Coming up next...replacing the ugly, dirty whirlpool bathtub with a regular soaking tub. What hides in those jets, bacteria-wise, truly scares me, especially since I use the tub on a nightly basis. But like everything else, the result will be worth it.

The joke's on us

So when the well guys came last week, they made some recommendations regarding which pipes needed insulation against the freezing cold weather that was coming.  Dutifully, we followed their instructions to the letter....except for one small rubber water line running from the booster pump, which we just kind of forgot about. D'oh!

Guess which one froze this morning and shut off all the water to the house? 

But while we may not be the best listeners in the world, we're not unresourceful once we screw up.  We took a heating pad, an extension cord, and hauled them outside so we could thaw the line and re-start the system.  And today we will make sure that little rubber hose is fully insulated so this never happens again.  

Yes, we live and we learn here on the Hot Flash Homestead.  And waking up, stumbling into the shower, turning it on and having no water whatsoever come out is, as it turns out, a very excellent teacher. 

Well Pump, Part Two

So the boys from the well drilling company came out to look over our well set-up, make sure everything was in good working order, and let us know any ways they could think of to reduce the amount of time the booster pump on the well ran, and hence our electric bill.  The running joke in our household is that you can flush the toilet and the booster pump on the well will come on...which is not what you want, from an energy-efficiency standpoint.  

We learned several things today:

1.  Buying a secondary pressure tank would not save us any electricity, as any savings we gained by not running the booster pump as much would be offset by running a secondary pressure tank instead.  Six of one versus a half-dozen of the other. Hrumph.

2.  In the event of a power outage, we WILL have water in the house...but with no power to the booster pump, there will not be enough pressure to get water into the hot water tank inside the house (meaning no hot showers during the zombie apocalypse).  There will also be extremely low water pressure for our inside faucets. BUT -- with 4,000 gallons available in the holding tank, we can access that from a faucet next to the big tank itself.  So we and our animals won't be dying of thirst. We'll just either be taking cold sponge baths or smelling kinda funky until the problem is remedied.  I can live with either of those options as long as we have drinking water for, potentially, at least a few weeks in the event of a disaster.

Old booster pump with new microswitch (at upper right)

3.  One thing that's been happening that has probably driven our electric bill up is that a micro-switch on the booster pump was starting to fail, leaving the pump running longer than it needed and causing back pressure.  They fixed this today with a new micro-switch.   The booster pump is also starting to fail, but we are going to let it die completely before replacing it.  The new micro-switch will work on any booster pump we buy, so we figured that was a good investment.

4.  And a few stats:  We have standing water at 403 feet and the well itself is about 600 feet deep, so we're in good shape there...if we start to run dry at any point, we can lower the pump without major expense.  With wells in this area, it's not lowering the pumps that kills homesteads and country properties, it's having to drill a new well when the old one reaches bottom and goes dry.  But I think we'll be OK for the next decade or so.  And we have started a well fund in case we ever do need to drill a new one.  

I realize for people who live in greener areas, the idea of a well pump sitting at 600 feet deep probably seems crazy, but that's how we roll in the mediterranean climate of Central Coast Wine Country and elsewhere in the western U.S.  

We've also decided we're going to look into the idea of some solar panels which would generate at least enough power to run the well pumps, in the event of a power outage and even on regular days.  That would lower our electric bill as well as protect  our comfort (and our crops) in the event of a disaster.  It would be expensive and we'll probably have to save for it, but it might be worth it, long-term.  Kind of a duh there...with so many sunny days, it seems criminal not to take advantage of them to create energy.