Sunday, October 24, 2010

Water, water...... over there


I don't know if you can see the garden hose running all the way from our house over to the back of the church, but it's a water line now.

Just before I was getting ready to leave the office Thursday I discovered there was no water at the church. So I checked circuit breakers and kinda walked around trying to think of what the problem might be. I even went out and looked in the well pit, and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. So I called the handyman guy... he didn't know what to do. I made a few other calls and eventually a plumber showed up about 5:30. He checked this and that and said he thought we either had a bad well motor, or a cracked well pipe. He suggested I call another guy, who suggested I call another guy, and finally just a little before 7 pm I left a message with somebody hoping they would be able to come on Friday and enable us to have water for Sunday. When we got home from supper he had left a message and had us on the schedule.

Well, when I called back on Friday morning and explained the situation he didn't sound overly optimistic. He said he would come and look it over, but in the meantime he called someone else and set up an appointment for them to come on Monday. He said he'd rather not try doing it without the proper tools (didn't want to pull the pump from 4" galvanized by hand) and this other company would do a better job. So, until then, he came and hooked up the water from the parsonage to the church. He put a valve between the pump pipe and the tank (so the water from the parsonage didn't go into the well), and hooked the hose up there. I think there are 6 hoses hooked together running across the parking lot. Hopefully this will work until Monday.

I guess a best case scenario is that they pull the submersible pump and are able to fix it and put it back where it is. However, it's also possible that our well is dry. So then we'd be looking at either drilling a new well or tying into the well at the parsonage. Neither of which sound like much fun to me. I guess it's also possible that the well is okay, but they might not be able to use the same type of pump, which means we'd have to make some changes. Argh. I hate stuff like this.

Anyway I spent my day off dealing with plumbers and well guys, and then waiting on them to show up. The one was supposed to be here at 10:30 Friday morning, but didn't arrive until more like 12:30. At least that gave me time to round up enough garden hose from several of the neighbors, and also shoot some baskets.

Just another day in the life of a small-church pastor.

4 comments:

Jim L said...

Funnily enough, we just introduced the kids to the movie "The Money Pit" last Wed. night. Maybe you should watch it again to get used to hearing "About two weeks" for the upcoming plumbing epic. :o)

Anonymous said...

While at Grange the watere stopped. Here the pump was to low in the well. It worked great for ten years then all of the sudden one day quit. They cut the amount of hose in the line and in seconds we had water again. Hopefully your problem will be an easy fix. Frank |Stoner

Oh yea. Happy Pastor appreciation month.

dan said...

Jim,
I'm trying to keep 'money pit' worries at bay. You know, as long as I've got this long hose I'm ok. :)

Frank,
I hope it's something simple like that. Happy PAM to you too! Any news yet?

Anonymous said...

NO news yet. The church is having me speak one more Sunday...this coming Sunday. I meet with the pastoral search committee chair tonight. I'm told it's between me and a guy that's 59. Frank Stoner