Monday, July 5, 2010

Something Wrong with the Water Works

This blog post is dedicated to Jason of Paradigm Horse Farms whose wife Melissa is always snapping photos of him enjoying his farm maintenance duties, and all husbands who go above and beyond the call of duty. Can you spot my husband in this picture?









For the past two days, the submersible pump in the water tank has been mysteriously tripping the GFCI circuit. Fortunately, Tim chose to build an access area to the stone box and the man hole which will later be covered up with...something or other... but which is still wide open providing much needed access to the inner workings of the water collection tank. As it turned out, there was a leak so when I left the pump running with pressure on but not using the hose (in between filling watering cans to mix the fertilizer), water was spraying all over inside, and getting up in the conduit to the electrical connections. Tim took a peek in, diagnosed the problem, and decided the only way to get to it was to just put on his swim trunks and get in. Here's the initial submersion. It may have been 90 degrees at 10 am today (topped out at 104 on the garden thermometer) but the water was still a chilly 55 degrees or so.





Once he was in there, he was able to see that one of the fittings had been hose clamped to the point of failure via the Swedish method of "Gudentite" ... or is that German?....





Leaving it with a large crimped dent where it should have been round.





I ran to and fro from the tank to the garage to the tank to the basement to the tank, back to the garage collecting tools and parts while Tim enjoyed a bugs eye view of the yard. After a bit he decided it really wasn't that bad in there. On any other day it would have been highly unpleasant.





Now my water is again flowing freely and I can enjoy watering each morning while we wait for this heat wave to break. Like I said, the shady side of the gate post was 104 today, and we had 94 on the truck thermometer when running errands. No rain is predicted until Friday, so we will be needing this water!

8 comments:

  1. Kudos to Tim!

    I must say, that man hole does seem a bit smaller than most men would like it to be... how did he manage to squeeze his shoulders in through there?!?

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  2. If that man ever has to have an MRI, he's got nothing to worry about!

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  3. I can empathize all the way down to the grimace on Tim's face. Some day, some how, that man and me are going to have a beer or twenty and a very long conversation. May the Lord have mercy on us both. :)

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  4. Jason, from what I've seen on the blogs, we would all get along famously. If we're ever in Tennessee, or you're ever up North, we'll have to arrange for those beers.

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  5. Actually, being a Canadian boy and all, I'm gonna pull out all the stops and request Crown. :) I would walk from Middle TN to the Southern Tier for a shot of Crown ! LOL !

    Funnily enough, I was, relatively speaking, pretty close to you all a week ago. I went up home to see mom, my brother and other assorted family members for a few days and it was so much cheaper to fly to Buffalo than to fly to Toronto, that's what I wound up doing. On the return trip, I crossed into the US at the Rainbow Bridge just below Niagara Falls. This is something I haven't done since I went to see my grandparents in Elmira quite a few years ago and it was nice to see the falls.

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  6. I think we have Crown in the cabinet.

    Yup, we're down in the corner of WNY. An hour and a half south of the Buffalo airport, and a little over 2 hours from Elmira.

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  7. It may not be in the cabinet for long ! J/K !! LOL !

    I think everyone in the southern half of middle TN has looked at your blog...many of them from this location as you will quickly see if you keep track of blog hits with StatsCounter or the like.

    I've always liked the Southern Tier counties and we've done quite a bit of business all along the PA line at one time or another. We used to buy farm equipment for resale out of some place just off Rt. 219 in Bradford, PA. Dinged if I can remember the name of it though. My first wife and I got stuck in Angelica on a bitchin' cold Sunday afternoon when the 86 Tempo we were driving at the time (with 320,000 on the odometer) decided to throw a clutch on us. Fortunately, I ran into a super nice fellow farmer who had some wrecked cars on his place. He and I took the clutch out of one of them and got us going again while my wife waited in the tea room at the hotel or I might still be writing this from there !

    Hope Tim's repair is still holding water ! :)

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  8. I literally laughed out loud at the caption of your first picture - "can you spot my husband in this picture?" Priceless!!

    Looks like just another day in the life of Melissa and Jason . . . I hear the Green Acres music in my head a lot!

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