Home-built Infrastructure: It just goes on and on.

One of the several things that has always perplexed me about this place is how poor the local contractors are. There’s one solar power contractor who’s at least polite and honest if not god’s gift to the industry, but the welldiggers are insufferable. Overpriced, insolent, utterly undependable, and you can’t ever know whether – on those rare occasions when they do show up and accomplish something – they’ve done a half-decent job until something terrible happens. Normally in the worst possible way and at the worst possible time.

I refer, of course, to Landlady’s well pump. And by the above standard we’ve actually dodged a bullet here: The problem happened in a tolerable fashion at a time when it didn’t really matter. But given that they only did the new installation a couple of years ago, and given that the problem seems to be a pipe break, which shouldn’t ever happen at all because duh…grrrrr…

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How the *&^% do you break a pipe in the middle of summer?

About Joel

You shouldn't ask these questions of a paranoid recluse, you know.
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4 Responses to Home-built Infrastructure: It just goes on and on.

  1. Judy says:

    My guess. They put a kink/bend in the pipe while putting it together or down in the hole, which weakened the pipe and it finally sprung a leak. Or at least that is what I understand from my father when we had to pull 275′ of pipe out of a well one hot humid day in Oklahoma to replace a check valve at the bottom. That operation is not a one-man deal. Two is better and three or four is best. A 500 gallon propane tank is real helpful in giving the two-man operation a place to rest the pipe for the next heave-ho.

  2. jon spencer says:

    Was it the casing or the water pipe that broke? Casing should never break, although with the right conditions they might erode. The water pipe, especially if the pump is near the bottom of a deep well will flex a bit every time the pump starts or stops and eventually a crack might form.

  3. Joel says:

    Don’t know, didn’t dig. But it’s either the casing or (more likely, I think) the pipe that leaves the casing to go up the hill. Whatever, the water is coming out of the ground right next to the casing.

  4. One thing that might snap PVC like that is the weight of all that wire going down to the pump. That’s just a shot in the dark as that looks like no wellhead I’ve seen. Where is the casing and why would someone bury it? If the wiring has turned loose of the supply line it can rub on the casing and eventually short or pull loose a connection.

    Good luck getting a driller to admit fault – though I have seen one do so in a similar instance. He made it right at no cost and left us with a spool of 600′ heavy gauge wire with a burned spot about 250′ towards the middle.

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