Sometimes it seems that no matter how much you've read, researched, studied and thought you'd learned about things, reality sets in and you find, in the grand scheme, you KNOW NOTHING. Such was my experience, soon after moving to this little farm.
Water, the essence of life. Clean, clear, plentiful, potable water. Water to drink, water for cooking,cleaning, bathing, water for the animals, for the garden...the list went on. We had our very own well and would no longer have to pay for it, as we did back in the city When I asked the necessary questions of the homeowner before buying the place, I was told that there was plenty of water--except to be careful during the summer because it was possible to run the well dry if it didn't rain much. I didn't realize when I signed the papers that 1988 would later be called The Year of the Drought. The first time I did a walk-through, I'd forgotten to taste the water. I remembered, later and made a point of tasting it when I went back a second time. I hoped it wouldn't have a strong iron-taste, and it didn't--it tasted of chlorine, although stronger than our city water back home. My realtor assured me that a house in the country couldn't be sold if the water wasn't good, and that tests were run and documentation was submitted at closing. I felt safe.
I took the added precaution of having a home inspection, which was just becoming a popular option in buying a home, and the sellers gave me a one year warranty as part of the sale. I felt secure.
The house had no furnace; the sellers had it removed during the oil crisis of the 1970's, and had installed baseboard hot water heaters throughout the house, with individual thermostats in each room. There was a woodstove in the "family" room and a fireplace in the "living " room and a cute little antique pot-bellied stove in what we called the "garage room", because what had previously been an attached garage was now built into a room. I brought an airtight woodstove with me from my previous home and was prepared to split firewood to keep us warm all winter. You know what they say about splitting wood: it warms you three times. Boy, were we going to be cozy!
Things began to go awry during the weekend previous to the move when my relatives came to help me clean the house before the furniture came. We dumped buckets of dirty water down the kitchen sink, but after only a few buckets of water, the drain began running very slow. It seemed a little strange, because there was no debris in the water to clog the drain, only dirty water. The weather began to warm up, so we opened the sliding door to the deck to let in a breeze. As the day progressed, a smell began emanating throughout the kitchen. Since the sink drain was running slow, we dumped the bucket water in the yard, but the smell continued. Where was it coming from? Not understanding how this house worked, yet, I thought that perhaps the smell was from the bathroom's vent pipe and that a breeze was wafting the smell toward the deck, which was off the kitchen.
Two days later, my dear relatives helped us move from city to country, and we settled in. It was hot, it hadn't rained in quite awhile, and the water began to taste strangely. Remembering what the seller had said about wasting water during summer months, we took the precaution of travelling back to the city for visits to my parents with empty, washed milk jugs and filled them with "city" water to take back. Then, we had a problem with the bathroom toilet, so I called the plumber listed with the home warranty. He came out, ended up having to replace the entire toilet as the original one had a crack in it. I mentioned the smell we'd been experiencing through the kitchen door and asked him if it could be the vent pipe from the bathroom, and also about the slow-moving drain in the kitchen. He informed me that the warranty applied only to systems within the foundation of the house, and he attempted to snake the kitchen drain. He thought there might be a break in the drainpipe and quoted me an outrageous sum to fix it. I was beginning to lose it. What was happening to this place? My son and I had watched the movie, "The Money Pit" and loved it, but is this what was happening for real? The plumber offered to "cut (me) a deal" if we would dig a hole under the deck so he could make the repair. As deck planks were removed and the digging commenced, the smell became unbearable. Imagine the stinkiest outhouse you've ever visited and you'll know how it smelled. What we found made me angry: the pipe hadn't broken, it had been cut, when the family room had been built, a few years earlier. Rather than repairing it, then, a "French drain" was built, filling the area with gravel instead of connecting it to the septic tank. Small amounts of water probably drained through, but during our bucket-dumping of dirty water, we'd unwittingly saturated the drain, which backed-up the kitchen drain. I felt this was a blatant cover-up on the part of the sellers and called my realtor (I also think the sellers felt the home warranty would cover the repair, once we'd discovered a problem.). The realtor called the previous owners who claimed no knowledge of a problem, and said they never smelled anything because they rarely used the sliding door to the deck. Since the deck's door was the only source of ventilation for the kitchen (there was no window), I found that hard to believe.
That first summer, the drought ended on July 29 with a glorious downpour during my birthday celebration. We never ran the well dry despite the warning, but we were hauling all our drinking water from the city because it tasted, well, bad. A short time later, I had need to call another plumber, because the pump on the well wasn't working. "Sounds like you got a faulty foot valve", was the plumber's telephone diagnosis, when I gave him details of the need to keep priming the pump. When he arrived and I pointed down the hill as to the well's location, he set to work removing the concrete lid to peer inside. When he came back up the hill, he asked me if I was aware that I had a six-foot deep dug well, and that, as a precaution, he was going to take a sample and have it tested. A few days later he returned with the results which showed the numbers of the contaminants put the water quality beyond raw sewage! I couldn't believe it! How could they sell the house if the well was so bad? The well had "passed" the test; I had the paperwork! Well, that kindly old plumber explained that evidently enough bleach had been dumped down the well in order to "get the numbers they needed", and that when I'd first tasted the water and it was so strong of chlorine, that was probably when it was tested and as soon as the bleach ran out, it was back to getting polluted again, because the well was mostly groundwater runoff. My stomach turned, just thinking about it. He said he was within his rights to condemn our well and that we shouldn't use it for anything: we needed a new well.
Now, the locals in this township claim that there's so much water under the ground, here, that "wherever you dig a hole, it'll fill up with water". In reality, the water table, here, is at about 60-80 feet. My well-driller arrived, did his calculations and decided on the best location to begin drilling. This particular well- driller came highly recommended, and was well respected in the county. After two days of drilling, there was still no water. When drilling a well, one is charged by the foot. I began to wonder if maybe we had a dry hole. No, I was assured, it was down there, they just had to go deep enough to get the best water. By the third day, I wondered if they shouldn't try somewhere else on the property, but when I learned that I'd be paying for the amount they'd already drilled in addition to the new hole, I crossed my fingers, and prayed he was right the first time. Bottom line: he struck water, from the Berea Formation (whatever that was) at 265 feet! Delicious, cold,crisp, clean (eventually) water with nice healthy minerals (which would,eventually, rot out five hot water heaters until we finally installed a softener, years later).
Before our first winter, I called out a chimney sweep to clean and inspect the chimney and to install the heavy cast iron woodstove we'd brought with us. Upon initial inspection, I was informed it was a good thing I had called because there had been a chimney fire previous to our purchase of the house and the flue liner was destroyed. If we had built a fire in the fireplace, we probably would have burned the house down! A stainless steel flue pipe had to be installed with the woodstove attached to it, or else the entire chimney would have had to have been rebuilt. After that, for several years my son and I split and stacked wood and kept the chill off the house, for the most part. We learned to close off rooms which we didn't use, and even spent one winter in two rooms, closing off the family room, which became our "living" room. The (original) "living" room became our dining room. A few years later and now alone, as my son had grown and moved out on his own, I awoke with a start one morning, at about 3 a.m., to the sound of a huge BOOM. I thought a truck had slid off the road and somehow hit the house. Outside, the night was cold and still; there was nothing to see. Awake, I went to the bathroom, flushed the toilet and that was the last time I heard running water for a week. The "boom" was the sound of the house freezing, and with that the pipes had frozen. I finally turned on the baseboard heaters at their lowest settings to save the rest of the pipes, but found the electric bill for running them for 1 1/2 weeks was $300.00! It was time to have a furnace installed.
Is there a moral to this story? "Never assume", comes to mind. For all I'd thought I'd studied and learned beforehand, and armed with all the right questions, or so I thought, I was a city girl, naive and trusting. The experience has strengthened me over the years. I'm less trusting than I was, but the memories of those early years are priceless. Life was a struggle then, but it only made the outcome sweeter and all the more appreciated.
