poplar road

This lack of water pressure - flow, more accurately - is partly determined by short-sighted original owners who used a very small diameter pipe between the well and the house. We don't have the funds this year to dig it up right to the concrete floor and replace it. But about the time our cold weather hit, the low flow gradually dropped to the dismal state it's been in for the past two months. So low, that flushing the toilet reduces the tap flow to a trickle. So low that my dishwasher and washing machine take double the usual time, with less success than they should have. And more importantly, in the last two months it's gotten so bad that I was running out of hot water in the shower before I even finished scrubbing shampoo into my hair. Thus the shrieks. But Richard explained this nasty situation by saying that there was probably a crimp in that well-buried line between the well and the house, aggravated by the frost heave. So, there's nothing we could do about it.

Then, he went on several business trips (staying, I might add, at hotels with lovely normal-pressure showers) and when he got back this Thursday night, he was informed he'd be heading out on another trip on Friday. Before I got up on Friday morning he must have had a shower and for once either ran out of hot water the way I had been, or really registered how bad the flow was after being away for so long. He didn't say, but for whatever reason, when he called from the office to say he was going on the road again, he mentioned quite casually that he'd removed the old water filter. I knew it was overdue for a change but don't have the strength to remove the thing myself, and he's been working for a month straight without the time to deal with little things like that. I agreed to drop into our local plumbing supplier and get a new one. "Half a dozen", he said. Okay. He then explained how to change it (with the neighbour's help), and off he went.

The first thing I noticed after getting off the phone with him was that the tub was full of black grit. In winter everyone's wells get siltier, and with the filter removed running any of the taps would send that stuff into the shower head, the dishwasher, the washing machine... so at first I didn't run the water. I was driving into town for an appointment, so I picked up half a dozen filters and tried by myself to put a new one in when I got home. Couldn't unscrew the thing, and the neighbour wasn't around. I figured I could wait another day to do laundry and run the dishwasher, and I was in no hurry to wash my hair and freeze half to death. But I had a few dishes to do by hand. Well, what do you know! The water flow was back to normal! Hmmm...

I was busy most of Saturday and Sunday doing yard work, so it wasn't until Sunday afternoon that the neighbour and I got the new filter installed. There was already a sludge in the bottom of the filter housing just from my minimal water use in the two days since Richard pulled out the old one. Yuck. I got the water running and went back outside to finish my yard work. Yes, the kitchen faucet seemed to stay at that improved flow, but the air in the bathroom plumbing was causing all sorts of ugly sounds from the faucet and toilet. The real test would be the shower.

And how was it, when I quickly rinsed out the grit and rushed to get the shampoo into my hair? Blissful. Too hot, if anything. I'm so used to it running out of hot water that I didn't try to turn it down to about 50/50 hot/cold until I'd started to boil lobster red. Then I got the temperature perfect, and it stayed that way. For the entire time I needed to shampoo, rinse, condition, and even scrub down luxuriously with a loofah. Hurrah!

I can't believe it had to get to the point where you couldn't rinse a toothbrush in the cold trickle coming out of our shower head. All this time Richard has been claiming it's something I've been doing wrong! Hah! I'm going to be hard-pressed not to say anything about it when he gets home. Thank heaven it turned out to be such a simple thing to fix. I don't think I could stand one more cold shower.