Our home has a nice well. It doesn’t have massive gallons per minute, but it tastes good, is soft enough, and doesn’t have any nasty chemical contamination. It began surging recently.
It was obvious filling the toilet bowl – water entering faster, slower, faster, slower. It became apparent in the shower and at the kitchen sink. The water source is in Gizzo’s Crucible, House of Horrors, or workshop (depending on your attitude toward a chaotic work space). There was a box on the wall, clicking with each surge, so every few seconds a click.
Yikes! What ever should Gizzo do? Gizzo called Pelch.
Pelch is the kind of guy who seems to know something about everything. He is a wondrous, giving font of information who does not hesitate to come running when called upon. Everyone should know a Pelch-type person – funny, joyful, inquisitive… This one was easy – he answered Gizzo’s email.
Pelch said that he had the same problem, called a friend in the water filtration business who told him that wells are not part of his part of the business, so call Spafford and Sons. ”They put in a new well pump for me and solved the problem.”
Gizzo called and soon BJ and Chase showed up with a new pressure tank.
“Pressure tank? You sure its the pressure tank?”
It seems the big blue bottle has a bladder in it. The bladder makes the water go up into the house from the basement. That compression keeps the well pump from running all the time. The old blue bottle had a hole in the bladder, so the pump was struggling to keep up. Good pump – bad tank.
It looked as if the old tank was installed around the time of the Civil War. BJ would try to unscrew something and something would break, so try to unscrew that and the next thing failed. Broken pressure gauge, new capacitor, “T” fitting …. It took three hours for these intrepid young men to complete the task.
We have nice consistent pressure now, no mud in the water, maybe even a teeny tiny bit more pressure. Another positive – Gizzo had to move a pile of rubble in order for the new tank to be installed. Yay! More space in the Crucible. At least until the stuff moved out has to go back in…
Gizzo Bike Works 