Finally got my water back.

I finally got a few consecutive hours of sunlight yesterday, and when I checked the tank it was clearly filling. Which eased my greatest fear – that the well pump would fail during its extended downtime – but didn’t answer why I still had zero pressure at the kitchen sink.

The yard faucet, the lowest outlet in the Lair’s water system, persisted in doing nothing but drip. This morning I even took the faucet off the pipe, thinking it had maybe clogged with scale the way my hot water system did last year. No joy. So I figured it was probably just air plugging the very long poly pipe between the tank and the yard, and I needed to stand there outside for as long as it took till it started to spit air and water. And calcium and iron oxide, of course.

This afternoon was pleasant enough that I was able to do that, if by standing around I mean finish all the little steps like putting hose clamps on either side of the new shut-off valve and making an access cover for the valve…

…all of which was going to take some time anyway. Tobie had a very nice time basking in the shade and keeping me company. And just about the time I started to worry, the faucet did in fact start spitting air and red water. I let it fill the bucket a couple of times and then hooked up the yard hose, already strung downhill…

…and let it go until the water ran clear.

I finished up, put my tools away, and then went inside to find nice pressure on the sink gauge, a lovely fully-functional toilet tank, and nothing but trickles coming from the sink faucet, which I’d left open all afternoon. Bother. I wondered about that until I saw all the brown water stains in the sink. That faucet has a rather aggressive aerator which does tend to clog up from time to time. Just a little goop in the water would go a long way to plugging the faucet. So I turned the valve off and unscrewed the aerator … and the pressurized water kind of blew up in my face in a comical manner. But once we got that straightened out, the Lair had complete running water again.