It was like Spring. The ground squishy beneath my feet. The back creek slowly filling with an unmistakable trickle of water as the banks of the adjoining creek plum spilled over into the marshy bottom land.
Good thing the weather was so warm. It made the conditions right for exploring the mystery of the vanishing water pressure.
I arrived early Friday morning to find Joe, my neighbor and the cabin's former owner, sprawled on my kitchen floor, lying next to the gas guy who'd come to inspect the propane tank and get the house all good to go for their service.
Fortunately, they were not victims of a gas leak. They were merely preparing the new stove to be converted to propane gas and disconnecting the old stove from its lines.
After the propane man had worked his magic, Joe turned on the kitchen sink and was puzzled by the lack of water pressure. This began the weekend long sojourn into Plumbing and Well Repair Land.
It is not a pretty place but solving mysteries is great fun- even plumbing fiasco mysteries.
It was not the pressure tank. Nor the regulator switch. It was, we finally surmised, faulty impellors in the pump- damaged when the spring box ran dry this past summer.
Joe's friend, the well guy, sold us a Jacuzzi pump, at his cost no less, and Joe installed it with a little help from me and Mertis.
The pressure nearly blew the socks off the back of the toilet which erupted in volcanic majesty when we flipped the breaker on to test the new pump.
There was a lot of back slapping and hooting until the faucet slowly sputtered to a dead stop.
Remember the 55 million ladybugs that invaded the cabin in the fall? The ones I took to be harbingers of good fortune?
Not!
There were ladybugs and ladybug parts in every line, faucet, crack and crevice of every plumbing fixture in that tiny cabin.
It took hours of meticulous disassembly, blowing out the parts, accessible and not so accessible, with an air compressor line, then picking the cracks with various needle thin tools until at last they were clear.
There is a special place in Heaven for Joe.
He worked for two solid days with inadequate help in unsavory conditions and is still speaking to us.
We learned a lot...Like if you don't have whatever lube or grease plumbers use, Lavender scented baby oil gel works just fine.
It was a very entertaining weekend.
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