The worst of times, the best of times
We knew it was coming, we just didn’t think it would be this soon. A real rollercoaster ride with a much better ending than we expected!
Only days after setting up our irrigation (and before we even got to set up the timers) our cistern water level started dropping- QUICKLY. We hadn’t even used any water after several days of light rain. But the drop was fast and significant and unexplainable.
We had a well guy come by on Saturday to check out the components in the well house. Long story short, everything was doing what it should do. Just the well was not replenishing very fast.
But Saturday night the well wasn’t just not replenishing, its water level was plummeting. We quadruple checked all faucets - every faucet was off.
By bedtime we were down to 30%, and the panic level was high. All we could do was turn off all of the water completely for the night and Scarlett O’Hara it, think about it tomorrow.
At 6:30am on Sunday morning, Steve registered what he had seen the night before and it clicked. We have a meter on the frost free faucet in the garden, and Steve thought it was strange that it showed 450 gallons used in Saturday. A YouTube check confirmed his suspicions and how to fix it - the problem was the set screw on that faucet. The faucet handle was fully down, but some water was still coming out and into the drip lines, thus the water use we could not see or find under the landscape fabric. Not enough to puddle up, but enough to run our tank dry!
A few adjustments was all it took. We learned a few things. And the well has already started recovering.
We will still be instituting our Water Wagon 2.0 on Monday, filling our new 200 gallon tank from Whitworth Water on the back of the truck. It will take a few weeks for the cistern to refill, so we will make a trip to the water works each day to help offset our usage.
And - we are getting on the well company’s schedule for 2025 (24 is already fully booked.) As much as we typically LOVE infrastructure, for some reason we have not been able to get ourselves out ahead of this project. Until now. Now we will try to be excited about planning this one instead of dreading it and putting it off!
