Yeah. I said that. Because I’m a putz. Turns out he was just hiding out in the pumphouse, giggling, waiting for me to notice.
I need a gadget. Maybe an app. Maybe go oldschool with a really loud gong. I need a device that will tell me at a distance when the water tank is going empty.
I always say I’m going to make checking the water level a weekly chore. I keep a ladder right there, to make it simple. And I do it for a while, after every tank-emptying incident. But then weeks turn into months and sometimes years without incidents. And I’m never just strolling by it, I always need a special trip to the top of the ridge. So sooner or later I fall off. But the funny thing is I did check it last weekend after my broken pipes. And it got me anyway.
When the kitchen tap gave me the good news I went up the hill as fast as I could hobble and sure enough – nearly empty tank. Why? I went to the closest likely suspect, the pump. It’s been a while since the pump failed.
Ah! Mystery swiftly solved! This fitting might have broken on the same frigid night the cabin pipes broke, and until the last two cloudy days the break didn’t affect the tank level. Or something. Anyway, this is a problem even when the pump isn’t running because that brass fitting is the anti-drainback valve. The tank inlet is at the bottom to keep it from freezing, which unfortunately also means that as soon as the pump stops pumping all the water tries to head back to the wellshaft. Instead it’s just been pouring out on the ground inside the wellhouse. The pump actually seems to be working fine.
This is good news because, unlike the pump, I can fix this.
I shut off the pump then went ahead and broke off the fitting, plugged it as best I could and propped the pipe against the wellhouse wall.
Here’s another thing your cute tiny house on wheels doesn’t have: A workbench with a vice. Carefully dug the plastic fitting away from the brass threads of the valve…
And the timing could be worse. Tomorrow morning is the regular Monday morning water run, and the water dispenser is right in the hardware store so that’s convenient. Ian might have some of these fitting laying around but I wouldn’t begin to know where. I’ll bring home some spares tomorrow and there’ll be plenty of time to lose them before I need them again.
Only slightly related: Here’s something funny, in a “so funny I haven’t stopped cursing about it” sort of way. Little Bear and I have been working out traffic patterns ever since I added a room to the cabin. Things were really much simpler when it was one room: He had his bed, and stayed there, and I never stepped on him in the dark. Now he just never knows where to go and I never know when there’s a big black stumbling block in my path. If I have my pants on, fine, there’s a flashlight. But I don’t sleep with my pants on. All the light switches except one are on the opposite wall from the bedroom doorway.
All but the one that controls these lights…
By happy coincidence, the switch to those two lights is right next to the new doorway. I’ve lived in the cabin for over six years now, and in all that time those lights have been so useless to me that I’d almost completely forgotten that switch was even there. Kept creeping from the kitchen or bathroom to the bedroom in the dark, keeping to the edges to avoid Little Bear, sometimes tripping over him anyway…
…And there was a perfectly good light switch, right there. I am a creature of habit.
Anyway I finally started using the lights – but they had always been so useless that I never got around to refitting the fixtures with LED bulbs. The CFL bulbs work, but not real well. When you light off a bunch of them at once they take a second or two to get the idea, and then they have to brighten. And they tend to flicker. I don’t like them but never replaced these particular ones with LEDs because LEDs cost money and why bother? I never use them anyway.
Wouldn’t you know, todays to-do list involved bringing in the ladder and finally swapping out the CFLs for LEDs. That’s the chore I went to immediately after solving the mystery of the missing water.
Of course you know how dirty the fixture globes were, right? No problem, I thought – I’ll just give them a wash in the sink.
Uh huh. This is why I always always keep a whole bunch of wet wipes around. :-/
If your globes are glass, just soak them in water with cheap vinegar mixed in. Cleans them like new. Plus requires no work.
Are LED strip lights something that would be useful to you? Basically a 15 foot roll of tape with an LED every inch, you can cut them to length at 3 inch intervals, run off 12 volts. If you can solder that’s all you need, otherwise they make clips to adapt the tape ends to wire pigtails.
I can’t think of an immediate use for it, David, but it sounds like fun to play with.
Modify a new toilet bowl float, so that it’s on a long metal rod and travels with the surface of the water in the tank, when the level gets to within whatever level you select, a micro switch on the end of the rod activates, and a led light lights wherever you want. If you’re elctronically able, you can make it a flashing led light, or add a buzzer.
Didn’t we discuss an arrangement of bleach bottles, rope and pulleys that would allow you to see the water level from a distance?
I don’t remember that specifically. We did discuss a pole-in-pipe visual indicator, but unfortunately that would require drilling big holes in the top of Ian’s water tank – plus it wouldn’t be a big improvement over just walking up and knocking on the side of the tank. I want some sort of remote indicator.
A float switch of some sort is doable, I just don’t know how to power it or make it do things that don’t require 150 yards of wire.
Just remembering the way you tend to log data in your lair:
The static water pressure in the Lair would relate to the level in the water tank, (Plus the height of the water column up the ridge to the tank). A change of one pound of water pressure would relate to a 2.4 foot change in tank level, so small changes in pressure would be important. Obviously you would need to carefully select the gauge so you have a fairly spread-out scale. 60 pound gauges are cheap and easy to find on Amazon. Here is a 30 pound gauge that would be better if my guess as to your water pressure is correct:
https://www.amazon.com/Filter-Utility-Pressure-Gauge-0-30PSI/dp/B006K2RALY
I will leave the plumbing as an exercise for Joel.
Ben has a nifty idea!
The weight of a column of water is linearly proportional to its height. Say the top of the tank is 48 feet above the kitchen sink, a pressure gauge will show 20psi. A 9.6 foot drop in level would drop the gauge reading to 16psi. Potentially subtle enough difference to require a close eyeball read, especially depending on the full pressure range of the gauge.
A simple inline “T” fitting at an easy inspection spot (Kitchen?) would provide hookup place for the gauge.
The mechanics are shown here but the handy little chart makes the relationship easy to see:
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/hydrostatic-pressure-water-d_1632.html
I like this idea so much I already tried to buy a water pressure test gauge at the hardware. It would screw on to the hose bib outside, and I’ve wanted one for years anyway. This would have been a perfect time to put the theory to the test while the tank fills. Unfortunately the hardware didn’t have one. So I sent away to Amazon.
This would be simple to permanently rig: I could tee off the sink plumbing and run the gauge up through the soap hole in the sink! 🙂
“I already tried to buy a water pressure test gauge at the hardware.” I think that it’s just as well that they didn’t have one, at least if the one you bought would have been like mine. I looked at mine today: It has a smallish 100# gauge. Each little tick mark on my gauge represents two pounds of pressure (4.8 feet of water). You really need a gauge with a more spread out scale, at most a 60# gauge and preferably a 25 or 30 # gauge (depending on the height of your ridge and the depth of Joel’s gulch.)
Yeah, that’s one reason I want the test gauge – I really don’t know what my peak pressure is (and have always kind of wondered.) If I install a permanent indoor gauge it’ll peak as close to my maximum pressure as possible.