Jonathan Bridge is one of the most interesting and classiest carpenter/handymen/wizard I have met in my life in the country.
On farms, all sorts of things can and do go wrong, and when they do, a lot depends on getting good help quickly. I’ve experienced all kinds of electrical and water crises from fouled water to lightning damage to electrical problems, and now, our point well has shut down.
You really can’t do better than Jay, who is a friend, but also a remarkable man. He is a geologist and engineer by training, he retired a few years ago and works as a carpenter and handyman for complex projects.
He is quiet, deliberate and extraordinarily competent, everything he does is done well, quietly and thoughtfully.
He helped us when our pipes froze, he helped us get a water line out to the pasture (we were hauling buckets for a couple of years), he put a new room on our decaying front porch, saving us from a rotted roof.
Last night and this morning, four different plumbers declined to help us, they were all too busy or were wary of point wells. Point wells are very different from the water systems that urban and suburban homeowners use, and they are different from most of the wells country people use.
Ours was probably dug nearly a century ago, the farmers like point wells because they are far less expensive than wells that are dug deep with heavy machinery, and the farmers can maintain them, even replace them, themselves. All they need is a pump, a pipe and a sledgehammer.
We live above a high water table, so a point well makes some sense.
Simply put, a point well is not a dug well, but a pipe 10 to 20 feet deep on average that is hammered into the ground. A pump (Jay is looking at our pump now as I write this) attaches to the pump and a water tank and when the tank runs low water, the pump clicks on automatically – making a deep rumbling noise – and refills the tank.
If the water table is high, like ours, there’s no need to dig deep down. One problem is that few plumbers will work on point wells any more, it’s hard lab0r to hammer those pipes into the ground.
It seems that our pump has “seized up,” either burned out or worn out in some way. It was purchased in 1978. It’s due to die, it gave us great service. I just wish it had chosen a more opportune time to quit, like mid-summer. We are already hauling buckets out to the pasture.
Jay is checking to see if the pump needs to be replaced or can be repaired. A new pump can cost up to $300. If there is a more serious problem with the well, we may have to get a new well dug, which can cost up to $7,000 and take a long time to get dug, especially in this weather.
That would be a huge and disruptive problem.
There is plenty of water all around us, so I would image the problem is the pump.
Point well pipes can sometimes clog up, and that is messy repair. But as the water was flowing quite steadily all week, and the pump has obviously shut down, and can’t be re-started, or “primed,” that is the most likely issue.
We are keeping our fingers crossed especially as the temperatures will be 25 degrees below normal in a day or so an a massive storm is predicted for Saturday night and into Sunday. I think Jay decided to be an angel today, he has plenty to do, he agreed right away to come over here.
Nobody will be going anywhere after this storm hits, and even Jay won’t be able to get here. If our pump is fixed, Maria and I plan on priming the bedroom, getting it ready to paint. All the walls are scraped.
This was a little bone-rattling, but I ought to say that this is the life I choose, Maria too.
We both used to live in places where water is taken absolutely for granted and water is somebody else’s problem, usually the town or city. Up here, there is really no 911, not for the police, not for emergency repairs. We chose not to stay there, and neither of us regret it.
I have worked hard to build a network of good people I can call, but sometimes that fails, as almost happened here. I was more anxious about this than I usually get because the consequences of losing water at this time of year with a huge storm and arctic air coming would have been serious. And we’re not out of the woods yet.
It’s important to keep perspective when something like this happens. It’s exercise for the soul. We learn to be strong, resilient and hopeful. I’m betting Jay will go out shortly – he is a man of few words – and come back with a pump and we will have water.
That’s my prediction and I’m sticking with it?
And what are the odds of finding a man like Jay Bridge in my little town, an engineer, a geologist, a gifted carpenter?
He doesn’t need to be replacing water pumps in cold basements. He loves his work, and he loves to help people. That is a blessed man. I’ve offered to bring Red to his farm to help his new puppy, an English herding dog, deal with sheep.
I have things to offer too, and life, in a sense, is a kind of barter. More later.
Jon – I can’t believe it. An engineer, A geologist, A carpenter and wiling to come out at a moment’s notice and extremely competent – you hit the jackpot in your little town and you always attract such interesting people!
The best home owning advice I ever got came from an old repairman when I was in my first house. I was whining because the boiler had died and it was November. He looked at men and said, “Lady, they don’t break when you ain’t using them.” He was right.
Two decades ago on the first night in our St. Lawrence River bank home, we watched a fierce autumn storm over New York State to the south while listening to NPR. We knew when it reached Watertown as the station went off the air.
I did have candles ready in case of electrical loss, however it never occurred to we city-slickers that if we lost power, not only would we have no water, but no septic system (we have an unusual electrified septic)!
I feel your pain at your water loss and hope that it’s just the pump!