Plumbing the depths

Every house we have ever owned has had plumbing  problems.

I have replaced toilets and faucets, unplugged drains and repaired septic lines.

At Woodchuck Acres, with pvc in one hand and a library how-to book in the other, I replumbed the entire bathroom.

So it is safe to say I am not inexperienced with plumbing.

At Lick Skillet, the kitchen faucet drips. The bathroom faucet leaks out of several places. And the pump comes on every time you flush the toilet.

Fine, I thought. I can fix that.

First reality check. Both shut-off valves under the bathroom sink were corroded shut. After soaking them in Liquid Plumber, I got one to move and the handle broke off of the other. Not a good start.

In the kitchen, one valve is fine, the other is currently bathed in LP and still won’t move.

I was doing so well, I decided to investigate the pressure tank.

[Sidebar for those of you who have never had well water. Often there is both a well pump and a pressure tank. The pump comes on and fills the pressure tank which is half compressed air and half water. The tank holds the water for household use and reduces the times the pump needs to run—this is a good thing, helps the pump last longer.]

Our Indiana pressure tank is under the house in the crawl space*. I don’t have experience with crawl spaces. I could die happy never having delved into a crawl space. But a trip into our crawl space was staring me in the face.

I put on my big girl bravery, grabbed a flashlight, and with Tom voicing encouragement, wiggled into the crawl space.

Besides dirt, cobwebs, tin cans and bottles and other trash, there sat the pressure tank, another rusted out tank, and what looked suspiciously like the well pump—not in the ground where I would expect it to be. The pipes ran hither and yon and trying to figure out what goes where is beyond my plumbing smarts. Especially in a creepy place with no room to maneuver, no light to see by, and one female amateur plumber with a weak grip and inadequate colorful vocabulary.

So it’s house plumbing 3, Cindy 0.

*This is tornado country, why the heck don’t we have a basement? Most of the houses I viewed didn’t have a basement. I refuse to believe people seek refuge from a storm in a crawl space!