Ol’ Scientist Joel

So Ian and I are still having water problems. Not as serious as before, when the water tank emptied and refused to refill. We fixed that. Now when the tank empties it at least fills back up.

But it still empties.

Naturally, since this whole drama started when we opened the valve to Ian’s side of the ridge, we assumed (and still sort of assume) that the problem is a subterranean leak in the pipe going to his dome. This prophesy became kind of self-fulfilling when we dug that pipe up and naturally tore the crap out of it with the backhoe. The other possibility was damage to the irrigation pipe that tee’d off the supply pipe: No way we could dig all that up, so we cut it out of the system, left it buried, and substituted other known-good pipe.

That’s when we discovered that the pump wasn’t doing its job very well. We pulled the whole thing out of the well casing, repaired the damage, and now we know the pump is working fine – or as fine as it ever did. But it took nearly a week for the 2500-gallon tank to go from dead-empty to nearly full, and that in itself was a warning because it used to take about four days. This indicated that we either still have a subterranean leak, or the inlet hose is bleeding back to the well like it did a couple of winters ago. I fixed that problem back then with an in-line check valve. It’s such a simple mechanism, hammered from Russian artillery brass by primitive Pakistani tribesmen, that it’s difficult to imagine it ever failing. But when you’re doing all your own infrastructure work there’s one primal maxim it’s essential to keep forever at the front of your mind: There’s no such thing as an inconceivable failure. Uncle Murphy Lives Here. And he never sleeps.

Yesterday Ian suggested a series of tests that will help us at least figure out roughly where the water is going – or if it’s going anywhere. Maybe it’s really fine, and we’re jumping at shadows. Since the well pump is solar-powered and runs at all times when the sun is shining and the tank isn’t completely full, the tests must be conducted at night.

So yesterday, at twilight, I began Phase One. I opened all the outlet valves from the water tank. I dipped a long length of PVC pipe into the tank and marked the water level. I had previously filled a water bottle for use at the Lair, because while the test is running it’s important that I not use any water from the tank.

This morning before sunrise, I trudged back up the ridge and dipped and marked the pipe again. And sure enough…

The level dropped three and a half inches overnight. Not good.

The water could be leaking:
a. On Ian’s side of the ridge
b. On my side of the ridge
c. Back down the well.

This evening I’ll repeat the test with all the outlet valves closed. If I get similar results, we’ll know the problem is with the inlet and not the outlets. If I don’t, I’ll start eliminating outlet pipes one-by-one.

The drama continues in our next exciting episode.