Plumbing Crisis Averted And Mystery Solved - With Duct Tape!

What better way to spend the Friday night of Labor Day weekend than worming around on your belly in a filthy crawlspace!

Since we moved in to Toad Hall several years ago, we've been plagued with well problems. We've got the old fashioned sort of concrete cistern well that you can climb into with a ladder - or, in worse circumstances, fall into. We're using a shallow-well jet pump installed beneath the house, and this has to draw the water over 120 feet into the holding tank. You can see the long pipe running beneath the house on the right.

We've already burned through two well-pumps. Eventually the pump starts running rough and we get pockets of air spitting from the taps. Then the pump runs dry and burns itself out.

We've had a well guy come out and explain that a proper fix would involve excavating that water line and replacing it, then installing a submersible pump at the bottom of the well. It would cost $8,000 to do this. Potentially twice that if it had to be done in winter, when the ground was frozen. That's why we just ended up buying another cheap pump and paying our plumber a few hundred to hook it up. Twice.

I was home last night when the pump started to act up again, so at least I could switch it off before it burned itself out again. But here we were on the Friday night of a long weekend, looking forward to several days without water. So I grabbed a flashlight and decided to resort to the quick-fix we used when this happened last year: running garden hoses from the outbuilding 200' away into our basement holding tank, and letting the outbuilding's pump supply our system. Unfortunately, the female to female hose coupling we used to do this last year was nowhere to be found, and I was left standing in the dark, holding two hose-ends next to each other which couldn't be joined.

I knew I could just go to bed and buy a coupling in the morning, but I was too aggravated for that. You know how sometimes when you can't find a solution, you just keep trying the same stupid thing you know won't work over and over again? I figured, maybe if I just switched the pump off for a while and let it rest, it would re-prime itself somehow when I turned it back on. I did this a few times while I was wrestling with the hoses, and I did it a few more after that plan didn't work out.

While I was crouching under the house scratching my butt in indecision, I noticed that the holding tank had a bicycle-tire-type air valve at the top. "That's weird," I thought. "Maybe there's a reason I'd want to release the air pressure from this thing." So I unscrewed it and pressed down on the pin, watching the tank's pressure gauge drop from five pounds to zero as a bunch of trapped air hissed out.

When I turned the pump on this time, it made a different sort of groaning noise than before. Phlegmatic, spitty, wet-sounding groaning noises. It ran for several minutes and then switched off - fully pressurized! We had water!

Then I noticed another hissing sound. I located it at the supply pipe coming in from the well. Not water spitting out, but air rushing in. When I pressed my hand over a specific part of this pipe, the hissing stopped! There was no visible hole, but clearly there was a microscopic fracture that was letting air back into the system, upstream from the pump. I ran to the garage for some duct tape, wrapped it around this part of the pipe, and then basked in the silence.

What was happening was this: The pump sucks water from the well. It has a check-valve which is meant to hold the water in place when it switches off, like putting your finger over the top of a straw. Our plumber had been telling us for years that bad check-valves were our problem. Well, this tiny hole was letting air in behind the check valve, so the water was retreating back towards the well as soon as the pump turned off. That's why the pump was working so damn hard, especially when we hadn't used water in a while. It had to suck through all that air before it got another sip of water. Then the air got trapped in the tank and made it even harder for the pump to work.

This has been going on for years. It explains all the spooky haunted-house noises our pipes make, late at night. (And here I thought my grandmother had been haunting us for throwing out her hoard of Christmas wrapping paper.)

The pump's running cooler and quieter now than it ever has, and for the first time ever we have consistent water pressure. Hooray for duct tape!

I suppose I should call my plumber and have him replace the damaged section of pipe. But I'm nervous. I don't know why just this part of the pipe corroded through. The whole length of it back to the well, 120' of it, is made of the same ancient copper or galvanized steel. I'm afraid if we go hacking at it we're just likely to shake something loose further up the line. So I'm inclined to just leave the tape for now, or maybe get some metal repair epoxy. We're dealing with negative pressures here, so anything I put on the pipe to patch it will be pulled inward, making it a much easier proposition for a patch.

Anyway, I'm grateful I was stubborn enough to hang around down there until a solution presented itself. And I'm even more grateful I was able to take a shower after crawling around in the dark under this 70 year old house.

Any plumbers out there in Steemit-land? Any advice for keeping ancient pipes intact until we have the budget for a proper system?