A couple of weeks ago you may remember my leaving you in a deep hole dug around an old well.
I am pleased to inform you that we’ve gone from a muddy mess around a seemingly unusable deep well, to complete self-sufficiency — a steady supply of water, year round, and not dependent upon electricity!
Last Saturday, after Roy backfilled the well (now with pitless adapter plugged), we installed a Simple Pump. After installing it, I now know how it got it’s name!
The pump is made by 2 mechanical engineers. Everything is made to fit perfectly together – and solidly together. After capping the well with their special cap, we just had to lower the pump cylinder, attached to the sucker rod and piping, into the well. A special tool that they fabricated held that portion in place while we attached more lengths of tubing/sucker rod until we got down about 50 feet into the well. Then it was just a matter of attaching the pump head, and voila! After a few pumps, water was gushing to the surface with each pump! It’s easy enough for the kids to do. Now we just need to keep flushing the well out of debris that has found its way in and then hope and pray that the water tests as being potable for the livestock!
The pump handle, when left in the up position, flushes the upper portion of the pump of water through a small, drilled weep hole in the piping. This means that the pump will not freeze in the winter! Again, no need for electric heating tape!!
The kids are almost hoping for a storm to knock out our power now so that they can go down and haul up buckets of water to flush toilets! I’m thinking that will get old pretty quickly, though!!
Being a little less reliant on electricity…
It’s a good thing!
Morning Star Meadows Farm 