Well That's Not Good
January 17, 2025
Things started off according to plan , and quickly went off the rails this last Saturday.
The plan was to attend an Eagle Scout ceremony for a friends son who was in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts with our son. It was a wonderful ceremony and they even very graciously called me out in a presentation for my time as his Cubmaster which brought back a flood of memories.
After the ceremony I drove up to Antioch to setup the Verizon Home Internet that I had picked up and replace the existing bathroom door knob with one that locked.
Blink Video Camera TestSetup of the home internet was a snap and the speeds it was getting were better than I expected. I had brought up a Blink camera from home that I configured before leaving and was feeling pretty good knowing I could take a look at things from our primary house if needed.
An Unexpected Turn
On my way to Menards I decided to get some dinner at a Mexican cantina I had been wanting to try. Great burrito.
Belly fully I headed off to Menards. On my way there I got a call from my wife, our daughter had gotten a flat tire. Fantastic.
My wife told me not to come home, she would get one of our friends to help change it in the morning so I set off for Menards to get a new bathroom privacy knob.
The knob install went off without a hitch, but I ended up working on moving the strike plate to a position that the door could catch for a good thirty minutes or so.
Tired I decided to make a cup of coffee. I flipped the kitchen faucet on and… nothing. No water. “Oh Shit” I muttered to myself.
“Well” Now What
Outside the Pump “Room”The house is an older cottage, two bedrooms, one bath with a finished loft area. Small and cute, but with a crawlspace that is pure nightmare fuel and a water well in a covered outdoor pit.
Inside the Pump “Room”We have never had a well, everything in the outdoor well pit is a mystery to us, I had no idea what to look for. A few YouTube searches later and I found myself outside proping the lid up and looking at things with a mini flashlight.
Pump Pressure at ZeroThe pump seemed to be running, but the pressure gauge was at zero. Not good, even a well noob like me could tell that was a problem. From my video review I knew to look for a fuse that could be the cause of the pressure issue.
The videos talked of two types, one with a manual bar on the outside that could be used to re-engage the internals breakers and if that was the issue cause the pressure to build
And another kind that didn’t have a bar and they advised to stay they hell away from. You can guess what we had. Thus began a series of calls to various local well and septic places, plumbers that listed well service as one of their specialties etc.
It was Saturday on a holiday weekend, and it was close to zero degrees outside, probably closer to minus ten out with the wind chill. Nobody was returning my call.
At around 11:20PM I got a text from the place I wanted to hear from saying that the on-call service person was likely asleep and I would hear from them in the morning. Well that’s not good, but ok.
So I went to bed fretting about the boiler blowing up, and in the morning around 9:45AM I heard back from “Eddie”.
Eddie sounded like a decent guy, as I explained the situation he wasn’t sure if he would be able to come out and door anything if he had to pull the pump. He explained it was a two man job and costs started at $3200.
I explained that I was had no idea what I was looking at, and could I go out and take/send him some photos. Eddie thought that was a good start, and within five minutes he got back to me.
Lucky for us, the type of well we have isn’t a deep water well that requires two people. As Eddie when through the list of what might be wrong, leading up to the worst case scenario of the pump being bad.
He explained that a pump replacement would be $1100. The lady from the other night had already told me the hourly labor charges, and as I calculated in my head that it would probably cost me close to $2000. But I had no choice, so I told Eddie to come on out and take a look.
Eddie said he would stop by the shop and pick up a pump just in case and then head over. Within thirty minutes his truck was pulling into our driveway. I showed Eddie the pump “room” and headed in to wait for the verdict.
Pump Crack IdentiedNot five minutes when by when Eddie was back at the door with a picture of the cracked pump housing. Frozen water expansion was Eddie’s guess and later during the install when he was bleeding the line he showed me how quickly the water froze on his screwdriver.
As Eddie started to work on the replacement I asked him if he thought I should get a heater for inside the pit. He thought that was a good idea, so while he was working I headed out to Ace to pick up a ceramic utility heater.
On the way back I thought to myself, I need to text the neighbor across the street when I get back to let him know what’s going on. As I pulled up at the house, what do I see but the neighbor outside the pit talking to Eddie. LOL
In maybe an hour the water was restored, the heater setup and running, and Eddie was on his way to his next emergency. The one small win here was that the ending cost was only $1215. Still a lot of money, but better than I expected.
By then it was close to 2PM and I was exhausted from the stress of it all. So I called my son with Facetime and told him I wouldn’t be able to make it up to visit. He understood and we agreed to get together the following Sunday.
Going forward, now that I have Internet up there I am going to look into setting up a temperature and outlet monitor for the pump room.
The neighbor indicated that the previous owner had a heater in there, but it got destroyed when the circuit the sump pump was on got flipped and the heater was submerged.
Suffice it to say, the heater is not on the same circuit with the pumps now. What a weekend to say the least.