When the Well Runs Dry. Literally. Meaning an Actual Well. My Well.

Right before we left for Quebec, we started noticing something strange with our water. It would shut off at random times. You’d be in the middle of a shower, and then suddenly poof! The water turned off. It would come back on thirty seconds later or something–without you having touched the spigot at all.

This is not what you want to have happen to you in the shower. It’s also not an ideal water situation for your house.

But vacation beckoned, so we had to leave the problem be for then, hoping that when we got back, magical fairies would have come and fixed it. All I can say is that if the fairies did come to fix it, they did a pretty awful job. The problem’s still ongoing–even after having not touched our water source (a drilled well) in five days.

After extensive testing (and replacing the pump switch, which seemed like it could be the problem), we’ve discovered it’s either a case of our well going dry, a leak somewhere in the line from the well to our house, or a faulty pump. I’m kind of rooting for the faulty pump, just because I have a feeling that will be less expensive to fix. (Though who really knows.)

The good news is that we still have water. As long as we don’t use too much at one time, we have no issues at all. It’s when the tank gets too low that thing shut off. Of course, the problem’s there all along–the pump gets water in thirty second bursts, it appears–as opposed to non-stop pumping, which is what it ought to be doing. It does that–all the time. We just notice it when we use too much water. Make sense?

So . . . looks like I might have to call the well guys to come fix things. I know one of them personally. We’ll start there. Here’s hoping it’s not too expensive of a fix, since we already spent a lot on the refinance. But this is why we have savings, I suppose. It just means we might not have enough to do much in the way of renovation this year . . .