Water Woes

After waiting several weeks, we finally came to the conclusion that the well people just weren't going to bother checking out our well to give us a quote on getting it back into working condition. I know there's Down South time, but this was way beyond even that. S talked to them twice about it and they said they'd go out; they called him once but didn't leave a message on his voice mail. We made the decision about a month ago to just go with city water -- and still haven't heard anything from the well people.



So, we paid the $1000 and a couple of weeks ago the city set up the meter tap at the road, and this long weekend S went down to Walnut Grove to run the water line to the well house, which of course has the existing pipework into the house. With the help of B, his friend R, and a Ditch Witch, they got the line run in a just a few hours (it was only about 150 feet to the well house) and hooked up. Yay, we have water! Sort of. *sigh*

As is common with foreclosed properties (I've been watching a lot of "Fixer Upper" and "Property Brothers" and "Flip or Flop" on HGTV since we bough this house!), what you don't see can be problematic. We were fortunate in a lot of structural areas, and that the electric is all good, but of course our luck had to run out sometime. After they got the line hooked up, they tested the kitchen faucet. All good -- clean running water, yippee! Then they tried the bathroom; clean water, but trickling, and B asked "what's that sound?". The sound, it turns out, was water pouring out of the pipes into the crawl space. When they added on the bathroom, they ran the pipes but didn't insulate them. We don't think there's been heat in the house for several years -- being mostly cement block, it's actually very well insulated and even today, when it was 90+ degrees in Walnut Grove, inside the house was cool -- and there definitely wasn't last winter, when it was empty. So of course, at some point the pipes burst, and they'll need to be replaced.

To add another wrinkle, there's apparently no access to the crawl space. (I find that hard to fathom, mysefl, but I have to trust that between S, B, and R, they would have found one if it had been there!) So we'll need to create an access. Fortunately another friend of B's, C, was in the kind of business where he has the knowledge and tools for that kind of thing, so we'll ask him to come out and look at it, and see if we can enlarge the existing ventilation cut-out, and if he has the equipment to do it.

(Random thought: in one episode of "Modern Family" Phil and Luke go into the crawl space under the house, but then in other episodes they have a basement.....)

I'm not sure when this next step will happen -- the Down South time thing again -- and S is getting a little frustrated, because he'd really like to be able to stay at the house when he's down there, but as I told him, it would be entirely different if we were only a few hours away. We'd have most if not all of the major stuff addressed already, at the very least. As it is, when it takes the better part of a day to make the drive one way, it's not going to be a fast process. (In fact, I had originally though we'd maybe get the floors in before applying for a refinance -- figuring it would probably appraise for a higher price so that we'd have more flex in the amount -- but at this point, I doubt anything will happen with the floors until next spring at the earliest. Plus from some real estate and appraisal forums it seems that while having bare cement floors may bring the appraisal price down a bit, it's not enough to make a significant difference in our situation.)

Tomorrow S is going to buy a water heater, but they won't be hooking it up right now. We figured we might as well wait until we get the pipes all fixed, just in case there's something that needs to be done with the water heater piping/hookup. Once the water is done and the heater hooked up, though, we'll at least be able to stay there! (A microwave will move up on the priority list at that point, I suppose!)

S asked me what it was about us and plumbing problems -- we had a major problem at the rental house several years ago (before it was a rental), and the city there is constantly having to repair the meter, and we've had a few problems at our home, mostly with leakage. I told him it was because we're Air and Fire signs -- Water is always going to be problematic for us!