#@!$*&%!!! plumbing. September 1, 2008
Posted by ourfriendben in gardening, homesteading, wit and wisdom.Tags: composting toilets, outhouses, plumbing problems, wells
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Silence Dogood here. Somewhere over the rainbow, people’s plumbing actually works. We know this, because we’ve seen it with our own eyes in other people’s houses: Toilets that flush, hot water that stays hot, water that’s clear when it comes out of the tap. We’ve even observed that other people don’t seem to live in a state of constant fear that their water supply will literally dry up.
Here at Hawk’s Haven, plumbing is a sometime thing. You see, we have a well, and wells are peculiar. For one thing, if the electricity goes off, as ours frequently does, the well stops working. Poof! No water. And, for all you math majors, no water = no plumbing. No toilet flushing. No nothing. Then, once the power comes back on, for reasons unknown to us, the water comes out a thick, sludgy rust-brown. And it takes a long time for it to clear up again. In the meantime, you can imagine how attractive and appealing that looks. You can also imagine that we have spring water delivered here every month.
Power failures aren’t the only things that can turn our water brown. If it’s been really dry for a really long time, then there’s a downpour, the water turns brown. And if we forget to stand by the toilet until it refills and shuts off, so we aren’t standing there making sure it shuts off, and it runs a good while, the water turns brown.
Hateful, hateful toilets. We’re lucky enough to have two bathrooms here at our little cottage, one with the shower, and a tiny one off the kitchen that’s also our laundry room. But neither toilet works reliably. The antiquated flushing mechanisms mean that the toilets either don’t flush or don’t shut off, which means lifting everything off the back of the offending toilet, lifting off the lid, and manually raising and/or lowering the flushing mechanism.
Not being pigs, we’ve tried to get this fixed. Over the years, we’ve had plumbers from a tri-city area come and do their damndest, to no avail. Currently, one of the toilets has a flushing mechanism that’s jerry-rigged with wire. And the saddest part is that the most recent plumber looked at our pathetic effort and told us that it was as good as anything he could do!
Getting back to the well. When you have a well, you’re excruciatingly aware of water levels and water use. For most folks, if it doesn’t rain, it means turning on the sprinklers and/or being thrilled not to have to worry about carrying an umbrella. For us, it means worried conversations about the well-being of our well (so to speak) and our water supply. It means frequent consultations with weather.com. It means ongoing threats from our friend Ben to study shamanism so he can learn a rain dance. (He’s kidding… I think.) It means that, if we won the lottery, we’d be having a second well dug out back and installing a windmill to power it.
Mind you, we’d love to leave our plumbing problems behind. We’d install a composting toilet in a heartbeat if we had a basement. Or dig and install an outhouse out back if we hadn’t been told that it’s illegal nowadays. Or rig up a solar hot-water heater if we didn’t have huge shade trees looming over our roof. Or set up a water tank if we had some way to get it onto the back of the property and get it filled up.
Meanwhile, we continue to dream of reliable toilets and a continuous supply of clear water. It’s a pitiful thing when one of the joys of going on vacation is anticipating taking showers in your hotel room!
#@!$*&%!!! plumbing!
‘Til next time,
Silence
Poor Richard's Almanac 
At my mother’s home there was the same problem with the municipal water. It was damn scary to stare at a toilet full of blood-red rusty water! What’s worse is when a load of whites would become impossible rust-stained if I didn’t check for the water to run clear! EEEK! My husband and I sometimes contemplate buying our house from the landlord, but the plumbing in a 100+ year old house can’t be good. I’m constantly plunging the drains and when I do bubbles come up and it makes a weird noises in all of the bathroom fixtures. Not to mention the “sink over flow” in the lawn, as the landlady calls it. We don’t believe it, but it’s what they say. 😦
“Sink overflow,” ha!!! I’m always terrorized when I do the laundry with brown water, too, but so far, no stains. But maybe that’s because we don’t have any white clothes!
Oh, I forgot to tell ya’ll about the time I flooded the bathroom because I tried to replace the fill valve!! LOL! 😀 There are a ton of video how tos and narrative how to about fixing toilets, the various problems and causes. The only thing they didn’t stress enough was to check the connections thoroughly for leaks! I noticed though, two days later when my socks got soaked form walking into the bathroom! The best part, or the worst part, the damn sh*thouse is carpeted!!!! But at least I can laugh about it!
Yow, a carpeted bathroom! What are your landlords thinking?!! Kind of scares you to think what must be under the carpet. But things could be worse. One of our dearest friends owns a condo in DC, and her bathroom floor has collapsed into the basement more than once (the ceiling’s come down a few times, too, if memory serves). Really makes me wish I had an outhouse!!!
I grew up on well water but don’t remember having such severe problems with it as you do. Maybe OFB should take to some Shamanic activities… your toilets might be possessed!! Now THERE’S a thought!!
Ha!!! Now there’s an idea–maybe we should get a priest out here to exorcise the toilets!
I’m so sorry to hear it. I can relate—we have a well also. Do you have a water softener or treatment system of any sort? My suspicion about the brown water is that your pipes are in need of work. When the electricity goes out, you lose the pressure in the line. An incoming flush of new well water breaks loose the lovely “crud” in your pipes (iron bacteria buildup). We’ve lost 4 water heaters in 8 years to well water, even with the treatments we use.
Too bad you don’t have a bit of extra water around for toilet flushing when your power goes south. We are blessed to have a swimming pool. We just gather up a few buckets for flushing.
May the well gods look favorably on you in the coming months.
Good advice, and thanks for the “well wishing” (yuk, yuk), CeeCee! The water guys who installed our ultraviolet filter years ago also recommended a soft-water system, but I just can’t endure the slippery feel of softened water. Eeeewww!!! Makes my skin crawl. I’d rather deal with the rusty water. But you can bet we started keeping old milk jugs of water in the bathrooms after our first power outage in this house!
Ah, the joys of wells. My house is pretty new so I knew the colored water was not from the pipes. Our water softner has worked wonders on that front! It also saves me loads of money on soap and helps keep the sinks and toilets cleaner looking longer. Anything that saves me time and money is a-okay in my book!
If we’re having a particularly bad storm I have filled up the bathtub with water so we have some extra water just in case we need to flush the toilet. I always have plenty of water in recycled water bottles laying around just in case I need it too. I fill any water bottle we have sitting around with water again once it’s empty. Funny how quickly a person can learn to be prepared when you run out of water.
If it were me living in a house with water shut off problems in an old toilet, I’d probably install a new toilet if I could avoid said problems.
Smart girl, Cinj! And yes, I’d think a new toilet might help, at least in the main bathroom. But after one plumber cracked two of the wonderful clay floor tiles that we loved just looking at the toilet, I don’t want to think what would happen if they tried to take it out! Sigh…
sounds like the water situation at my dad’s ranch. I bought him a solar shower so he and my brothers can get clean while they are down there working cattle.
Solar shower! Yes!!! Too bad we have so much shade here. Our sunny areas are so full, between the greenhouse, Pullet Palace, veggie and perennial beds, Cultivated Wild Meadow, compost bins, and fruit trees, vines, and bushes, we’d be hard-pressed to find enough room to set up a screened area where we could hang one and shower in privacy. But hmmm, it’s a challenge. I’ll give it some thought!
Boy oh boy, are we spoiled here at clay and limestone! City water is not bad, even though it tastes unpleasant from the algae (drought related. Officials have suggested refrigeration will get rid of the too earthy taste.) I can offer no helpful suggestions, just an ear.
gail
I love that pretty much every lab test has shown that city (tap) water beats bottled water for purity, Gail! But I’ve also read that it was the algae in spring and well water that gave it that “cold, fresh” taste that people who remember it still miss. I’ve never tasted that, so I didn’t realize that “earthy” would describe it. Um, gack! To each his own, right? (Er, “de gustibus non disputandum,” is that how it goes?)
Ack! Fortunately, growing up at my parents’ house and now in our current abode, I’ve been spoiled with super tasty and clear well water. Our current well is shallow, though, and that was a big motivation for building our rain collector. That, plus the mad rush to fill containers and bottles when the power threatens to go out, makes me totally understand your desire for a nice, deep, windmill-driven well. Someday!
Someday is right, Meg! We have three rain barrels for our plants—not that we remember what rain is, these days—but I wouldn’t dare drink rainwater in these pollution-laden times. Sigh…
Even though we have some old pipes and I filter water in the kitchen because of that, I never take my running, indoor plumbing for granted. Having grown up in times of cisterns, wells, and outdoor toilets, I consider our amenities luxuries. And, to think, it comes right into and out of the house with no effort on my part except to turn the knobs, and it even is warm or cold… my choice. Luxury is different things to different people, I guess, but this is luxury to me.
I agree, Barbee’! Indoor plumbing, hot water, and deodorant are three of the things that make me glad I live in the modern age!
I can vouch for the fact that plumbing problems are much bigger than they seem. I was faced with a leak in my water heater recently and the problem got worse with each passing day. All the plumbing help I received did my water heater no good. The leak was now posing a threat to the safety of my family and then the Los Angeles Plumbing Contractor, George Brazil (http://www.georgebrazil.net/) came to my rescue. They fixed the leak so well, my heater looks like it never suffered a leak ever!
Thank heavens, Joana! That must have been a nightmare!
It is pretty sad when you have to look forward to using hotel showers because your showers at home are so bad. Hopefully you can get your plumbing issues fixed soon. It sounds like a nightmare!
Yes, it’s not pretty, CP. Around here, you just never know what’s going to happen next!