Life with a Water Pump

Monday morning and the kids are still in bed at 8 am and the phone is ringing…not good. Turns out nowhere at the camp had any water and people were calling to see if Troy was working, he was scheduled to be working that day and if he had the day off he would no longer. It was too warm for the pipes to freeze like they did the first few days we moved out here and the pipes froze. Turned out the water pump in the well had somehow detached and was sitting in the bottom of the well.  A new problem that had not come up in the past so some creative thinking had to be done.  Someone told him that when they put it in someone was down there with a life jacket in the water setting up, not really an option for winter time. Thankfully Cor another one of the guys who works with Troy on maintenance decided he would help and take a different day off.  The two of them spent a lot of time waling between the well, which is down by the lake and the water house at the top of the hill at camp. They modified a ladder that was destined for the garbage and welded a few hooks on the end of it so they could hang it on the side of the well and climb down to get the pump without getting wet. There was a piece they needed to replace on the pump before they could reattach it, there was a lot of digging through bins in the garage desperately looking for this one piece or no water. There was talk of welding something to make it work for the day and have someone drive and pick up the piece the next day. Thankfully they found the part they needed and didn’t need to creatively weld something together that could take hours.  They had some creative way of balancing on the ladder and the side of the well and hanging down from the top so they could tighten the pump back into place. After they were done Troy said this is probably the only thing the maintenance staff can do to make everyone at camp really happy! It’s true, everyone was happy to have the water back. I was really thankful that Troy didn’t have to work late into the night to get the water going.