Oh, Well

We have well water at our house, and a couple of months ago, we began experiencing trouble with our system. As the weather became hot, I began running my irrigation hose and other hoses to water the flowers. I've been doing this for a couple years now, with no problem.

This year, something strange started to happen. After finishing my work in the yard, I would take a shower, during which time there was plenty of pressure. However, when I would turn on the sink faucet immediately after my shower, nothing would happen. Not one drop of water would come out. This happened a few times, and Mike would go down to the basement to press a tiny lever on some contraption that would get the water flowing again.

However, one Saturday, the water went out, and Mike couldn't get it started again. He called someone out to look at it. The men who came got the water running, but said that the pump in the well was going bad. They suggested replacing it immediately, which meant Monday.

Sure enough, Monday morning, they turned up and opened the well. Much to our chagrin, they said our well was so old that they had never seen a device of its design. They called in another expert, who said we needed to bring in a big truck to remove an old-style heavy metal pipe from the depths of the well and to clean the well itself. By the end of the day, we had made no progress.

There was a slight problem with having a big truck drive through the yard, besides the obvious issues of having the lawn torn up. A mountain of rubble sat right in the spot where Mike thought the truck needed to be. So, he spent several afternoons hauling the rubble away, which had to be done anyway, but suddenly became the priority.

Once the area was clear, we were ready to go, but the truck wasn't. Its owner was on vacation, and when he came back, he discovered the truck's brakes weren't functioning properly. We waited about a week, but we were quickly running out of time. An excavator was scheduled to come soon, and the hole he would dig was in the exact spot where the well truck would need to be.

Out of necessity, Mike called another well company, and they came right out. But nothing is ever that simple at our house. They examined the well, and agreed with the first company's assessment. However, they suggested that we also replace the top four feet of the well casing in addition to changing out the old mechanism. Mike said he would dig the four-foot wide and four-foot deep hole that was needed for the casing to be replaced. It took him five hours.

The next day, the company came back and completed the task. We had a new pump and beautiful new casing, all for only $2,100. Here's the old pump:

Here's the new casing before and after Mike painted it:

But the best part of this whole situation was that Mike admitted that he was wrong about something, and that I was right.

Rubble

After the sunroom came down, we were left with a concrete pad. Mike expected to break it up with a jackhammer, but when that proved to be an exercise in futility, he borrowed a sledgehammer. So far he's hauled away 7 tons of concrete and was lucky enough to find a place that would take it for free. This is unfortunate for the chipmunks who were enjoying playing on the pile of rubble.

Before Pictures

I've had a request for before pictures, and I've finally found them.

Here's what the kitchen looked like before the previous owner moved out:

Here's a shot from when we were moving in:

Here are the sunroom and deck before we moved in:

Stumped

The last step in removing the trees was getting rid of the stumps. Because it's so expensive to have stumps ground professionally, Mike rented a grinder for the day so he could remove several other stumps as well. In one day, with assistance from John K., he ground up eleven tree stumps. Our next door neighbor even got in on the act!

Feeling Chipper

Once the trees were down, we needed to find a use for their remains. Much of the large ash tree was cut into firewood. But we still had to dispose of the hundreds of small trees I had cut down in our backyard and the other bits and pieces of the trees Jeff took down for us. The obvious solution was to rent a wood chipper. Henry and John K. came over to help, and before long we had a huge pile of mulch!

And here is where the mulch ended up. It took almost the entire pile of chipped wood to cover the big bed in the front yard. It took me days to get it all done. And those darned weeds still keep coming!