Baumblog EST 1968 - A blog for the Baumbachs who originated in Syracuse, NY

Ugh. What a day. Last night, before going to bed around midnight, I heard my well pump cycle. Hmm, that's weird, I thought, as I've been sitting behind the computer for the past two hours. Maybe a toilet is running. About 10 minutes later, it cycles again. Hmm. I'll go jiggle the handle in a second. A few minutes later, it cycles again. Well, I'm done on the computer, but the fact I've noticed it cycle 3 times so quickly sparks a little worry in me. So before heading to check the toilets, I wander down to the basement. Crap, I hear running water. Splash, I step in a big puddle as I step off the last step. Crap. Well, the leak was obviously easy to find, as it was spraying water with some vigor.

So the first thing I think to do is shut the well pump off. Done. Still spraying. Ok, lets shut the valves off on the other side of the basement, that connect to most of the rest of the house. Ok, still spraying. Oooh, better idea, open those valves back up, run upstairs and turn a few faucets on to drain the house. Cool, that kills the spraying pretty quickly.

Ok, time to take it in, how bad is it? Doesn't look good. All three of the very large carpets down there are fully soaked. Like you step on them and water comes up over your shoe. So, I go and get my little 2.5 gallon shop vac going. I realize within about 30 minutes that this is going to take forever. So, I give up on the clean up for a moment and go try to see what caused the leak. Turns out, an iron 90 degree fitting sprung a leak right in the middle of the bend. Strange place for a leak, huh? It's the first joint from where water enters my house. Remember that fact.

I run out to Meijer to see if they have any plumbing fittings, which of course they don't. By the time I get home, it's about 1:30 AM, and I realize I'm not going to make much progress that night. I have the leak stopped, and I thought I made a sizeable dent in evacuating the water, as I'd sucked up about 30 gallons already. So I fire the computer back up, send a note to my boss that I won't be in on Wendesday due to the leak, and I go to bed.

I wake up the next morning, and take stock of what I need to fix the leak. Looks like aside from a new 90 degree cast iron 90 degree fitting, I need to replace an adapter, a tee, and a 90 degree copper elbow, as they are all located to close to the failed iron fitting to be reused. So I go buy all the replacement stuff, as well as flux, solder, 120 grit sand paper, a pipe brush, and a pipe cutter. I go through and sweat the pipes to what I think is good enough. Talk about a pain though, I was using a propane torch to heat the pipes, and it took forever to heat each joint. Had I known it would take this long I would have busted out my oxy-acetylene torch. Oh well. I've also spent several hours sucking up more water, about another 70 gallons. Oh, I picked up a stronger, bigger shop vac while I was at Lowes buying the plumbing supplies (on the second of my trips there already, as I forgot something my first trip there). So I finally get the nerve to turn the pump back on and see what happens. Leaks at three of my 7 joints. Great.

So, realizing I'm not good at sweating pipes just yet, I call Joe and ask his thoughts. He suggests getting the swagelock style plastic fittings. Cool, I'll give that a shot. Only catch is, I still have to solder one joint, to get from the 1" iron fitting down to a 3/4" copper pipe. Well, all said and done, about 9:00 tonight I fired the well pump back up and it seems to be flowing water without leaks finally!

It took a long time, though most of the time was spent vaccuuming up water. It's still not totally dry down there, as the carpets hold on to so much water I can't believe it. I'll work on it again tomorrow, but at least now I can finally take a shower.

So remember how I told you to remember the fact that this was the first fitting in the house before the valves that shut the water off from the rest of the house? Well, some guys at work had convinced me to just shut the valves off and leave the well pump powered while I'm out of town. If you don't, the water pressure in the well head can drop to zero, and then sediement can fall down into the well pump and damage it. Well you know what? I don't care. Had this happened on January 4th, water would have been flowing into my basement for over two weeks before I got home to find it. Now THAT would have sucked.... Anyhow, lesson learned, shut the well pump off before leaving out of town. No doubt about it.

GJ said about 11 hours later

Isn't water fun? Can't live with it, can't live without it. And you are far braver than I when it comes to plumbing. I need to replace some fittings and move some drain pipes under the sink (new sink will have holes in a different location) and I'm freaking nervous about even attempting that. ;)

Glad to see we never had that kind of well pump problem when we had well water in the last house we rented. The septic tank was plenty fun as it was.

Anyhow, sounds like you're back to normal, albeit after having to spend a chunk of change outside of typical monthly expenditures. Ouch!
Geoff said about 14 hours later

Now if only you had "Mighty Putty", you would have been all set!
Steve said about 21 hours later

Actually, the cost wasn't much. Including the new shopvac, I spent far less than $150. And that includes all the new copper fittings that I screwed up and had to replace. The carpeting in the basement is garbage, but I don't plan to replace it.

They have this new flexible tubing out that you might want to try GJ. At least for getting water to the sink. I think you're still stuck with PVC pipe for the drain, but cementing those together has to be much easier than sweating pipes. Either way, it's not like it will disrupt water to the entire house. That part really sucked. I had to be careful with what I ate so I didn't have to visit the crapper much yesterday....LOL.
GJ said about 22 hours later

Yeah, the current drains are copper, and have basically rotted away like most of the rest of the various sink plumbing we replaced when we had the bathrooms redone. I still need to do a PVC to copper interface, as the main drain pipe isn't going to be replaced. At least I have no garbage disposal to contend with. :)
GJ said about 22 hours later

Hmmm. I don't know what it would be like to have the water disrupted. I mean, really--if the town shut the water off due to a water main break, I could still use my toilets thanks to all the inbound water in the cellar. :) Certainly wouldn't be drinkable, but fine for the toilet.
Steve said 1 day later

The toilets aren't the end of the world, you can always hit a restaurant or gas station for relief there. It's the shower thing that drives me nuts. I guess next time we have a long term power outage, I'll go join a gym, so I can shower there.
GJ said 2 days later

just be sure the gym is in the next water district. :)

Geoff said about 6 hours later

wow...that hurts. I hear Exxon beat out last year's record for largest US profit. They pulled in more revenue than the gross domestic product of Turkey ($404.5 billion)...It is just disgusting how much cash these guys are bringing in. I gotta find myself some oil.

Steve said about 21 hours later

Fitting that I just finished watching "Who killed the electric car?" It's a totally one sided argument, and a very one-sided on at that.

Want to know why the EV1s were rounded up? So that any secret technology on those cars was not made available to competitive companies. Want to know why they were crushed? Likely because most of the rest of the technology on those cars is out of date, and no longer worth studying. Want to know why most of those electric vehicle cars were leased and not available for purchase? Because they cost a lot more than they were being leased for. They were just large scale development fleets.

GJ said 1 day later

We spend 3500 on gas last year, dude...gasprices.com is used by me to track my gas purchases/mileage, etc over the past several years now.

Oh, and the oil companies can make as much as money as they want (re: Exxon making so much moola), so long as we're willing to pay the piper. They've been testing the waters to see just how much the market can bear, and it's had as much an effect on the economy as the mounds of credit thrown at less-than-reliable customers over the past decade. I just wonder how much it can go up before we really change our behavior. A lot of analysts say it's five bucks a gallon--my guess is it's more like eight.

Geoff said 1 day later

I totally agree, thats why I am digging for oil in my backyard.

Geoff said about 5 hours later

It just goes to show you that defenseman should just totally forget about the puck in these instances, and take the man out. Except for Crosby who can be knocked down and still manage to score. In those cases your pretty much screwed :)

My hats off to Nash, that is some disgusting stick-handling.

GJ said about 22 hours later

Agreed. The goalie's job is to watch the puck. And he got faked out of his pants, too.

Geoff said about 23 hours later

i got faked out myself...and Ive seen it a few times!

Steve said 1 day later

Wow, that sucks! Maybe good for students trying to learn the library sorting system, but that's it.

Marc said 2 days later

I didn't even wanna spend the time to try to enjoy the game, it looked immediately terrible.

Geoff said less than a minute later

corvette

Geoff said 2 minutes later

There are tons of pics...but there are some good family shots too of all of you, so have fun browsing. These are all high-quality prints, so you can blow these puppies up.