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Pumping Air
Some time ago I was visiting a friend, elsewhere in a drier part of the country. I took a sip of the tapwater. "It tastes like it's chlorinated," I said.
"It is. Community water system."
Which kind of boggled me, because this was something like six miles from the nearest town. I figured most people in this country, who are urban, wouldn't know the joys of private home water systems, but if public water is reaching miles and miles from town maybe private home water systems are even rarer than I had thought.
Not here, in the State that Squishes Wherever you Step On It. Public systems go by the name of City Water, and we have laws banning private wells within the reach of such a system. But outside the city limits, pretty much all the houses have private wells. Usually these only go down forty or fifty feet; in many places, ten would be enough, if you weren't worried about that other feature of rural life, the Septic Tank.
Of course the wells come with associated water systems. Over the years I've become acquainted with four such systems. (And there's never a GOOD reason to become acquainted with one.)
There are other kinds, but the ones I've worked with all work in this wise: You have an electric centrifugal pump, which is Hardware Store for "Overwhelming amounts of electricity will move water, no matter how crudely that electricity is applied." Next to the pump is a pressure tank that contains water oh, about halfway up, air above that. Pump forces water into the bottom of the tank. Remember, liquids don't compress, but the air does. The compressed air above the water provides the "spring power" to push the water out again, and around the house wherever you need it.
Since the 1970s most of these have been bladder tanks, where the air is contained in a heavy-duty rubber balloon. Unfortunately, Ugly House is just old enough that they didn't have bladder tanks when it was built. It's got a plain old galvanized steel tank, which means that every couple years I have to pump air back into it. As the air goes away, that compressed air "spring" gets smaller and smaller, until eventually the pump is cycling off two or three times providing the amount of water you need to fill a coffee pot. You have to get more air into that tank, to return the pump to normal, longer cycles, or you're gonna be crawling under the house to pump more air into the tank AND to install the shiny new water pump you bought because you were idiot enough to burn up the old one.
So unfortunately, I have to pump air into my pressure tank every now and then. Doubly unfortunately, it is in the crawlspace under the far back corner of the house. Through the hole in the one concrete foundation wall that is small enough it almost pins me when I crawl through, around the corner, and then through the smaller hole that DOES pin me. At least I didn't wedge this time, like I did the last time I did this, when I weighed a hundred pounds more.
Triply unfortunately, creatures that crawl have taken the word "crawlspace" as a hint. I don't mind the garter snake I encountered down there once; go forth, multiply, eat lots of bugs and mice, and more power to you. I didn't get the snake fear when they passed out my instinct kit. Unfortunately I DID get the Spider Fear in double measure.
So let's do a checklist here; confined spaces, claustrophobia, heavy exertion in poor ventilation, loose fiberglass insulation everywhere, an electric air pump in direct confrontation with a water tank attached to a well that's the best earth ground in the world. And when things seemed to be pretty much under control... of course...
SPIDERS.
Well, OK, it was just a symbolic spider, one of the little tiny jumping spiders that are almost cute. But at that point I decided that yes, I can't tell how much air I got into the tank but it is ENOUGH, dammit, and I'm going home.
I am out now, and washing the fiberglass dust out of the jeans and jacket I wore down there. It will probably be two or three years before I have to do this again, by which time I will probably have forgotten enough about what that crawlspace is like to be willing to go down into it again.
"It is. Community water system."
Which kind of boggled me, because this was something like six miles from the nearest town. I figured most people in this country, who are urban, wouldn't know the joys of private home water systems, but if public water is reaching miles and miles from town maybe private home water systems are even rarer than I had thought.
Not here, in the State that Squishes Wherever you Step On It. Public systems go by the name of City Water, and we have laws banning private wells within the reach of such a system. But outside the city limits, pretty much all the houses have private wells. Usually these only go down forty or fifty feet; in many places, ten would be enough, if you weren't worried about that other feature of rural life, the Septic Tank.
Of course the wells come with associated water systems. Over the years I've become acquainted with four such systems. (And there's never a GOOD reason to become acquainted with one.)
There are other kinds, but the ones I've worked with all work in this wise: You have an electric centrifugal pump, which is Hardware Store for "Overwhelming amounts of electricity will move water, no matter how crudely that electricity is applied." Next to the pump is a pressure tank that contains water oh, about halfway up, air above that. Pump forces water into the bottom of the tank. Remember, liquids don't compress, but the air does. The compressed air above the water provides the "spring power" to push the water out again, and around the house wherever you need it.
Since the 1970s most of these have been bladder tanks, where the air is contained in a heavy-duty rubber balloon. Unfortunately, Ugly House is just old enough that they didn't have bladder tanks when it was built. It's got a plain old galvanized steel tank, which means that every couple years I have to pump air back into it. As the air goes away, that compressed air "spring" gets smaller and smaller, until eventually the pump is cycling off two or three times providing the amount of water you need to fill a coffee pot. You have to get more air into that tank, to return the pump to normal, longer cycles, or you're gonna be crawling under the house to pump more air into the tank AND to install the shiny new water pump you bought because you were idiot enough to burn up the old one.
So unfortunately, I have to pump air into my pressure tank every now and then. Doubly unfortunately, it is in the crawlspace under the far back corner of the house. Through the hole in the one concrete foundation wall that is small enough it almost pins me when I crawl through, around the corner, and then through the smaller hole that DOES pin me. At least I didn't wedge this time, like I did the last time I did this, when I weighed a hundred pounds more.
Triply unfortunately, creatures that crawl have taken the word "crawlspace" as a hint. I don't mind the garter snake I encountered down there once; go forth, multiply, eat lots of bugs and mice, and more power to you. I didn't get the snake fear when they passed out my instinct kit. Unfortunately I DID get the Spider Fear in double measure.
So let's do a checklist here; confined spaces, claustrophobia, heavy exertion in poor ventilation, loose fiberglass insulation everywhere, an electric air pump in direct confrontation with a water tank attached to a well that's the best earth ground in the world. And when things seemed to be pretty much under control... of course...
SPIDERS.
Well, OK, it was just a symbolic spider, one of the little tiny jumping spiders that are almost cute. But at that point I decided that yes, I can't tell how much air I got into the tank but it is ENOUGH, dammit, and I'm going home.
I am out now, and washing the fiberglass dust out of the jeans and jacket I wore down there. It will probably be two or three years before I have to do this again, by which time I will probably have forgotten enough about what that crawlspace is like to be willing to go down into it again.