I had some homeowner fun the last couple of weeks. We have a house that my grandparents used to live in and it was rented out when I moved back to Montana I didn't want to displace them so I moved into an older, shittier house that was on a nearby ranch that we lease. 10 years later, the renters finally moved out and now I'm going to move over there, but I want to do some remodeling before I move in.
All summer it's been empty but I haven't had much time to work on it so I had the water shut off. A few weeks ago I wanted to pressure wash and reseal the decks so I turned on the water and nothing happened. Went out to the well pit and found this.
A fitting rusted out, the pit filled with water, floated the pressure tank, tipped it over and covered everything with mud. Great.
So I went to town, got a new fitting as well as a pressure switch, control box, and pressure gauge and stood the tank back up, replaced the fitting (along with another one that actually broke when I took it apart) put on the new pressure switch, gauge, and control box, turned on the power and the pump came on, but wouldn't push more than 20 psi (It's supposed to keep it between 40 and 60). I'm thinking maybe something is turned on in the house or something so I put the cap on the pressure switch and it shocks me. I measured from ground to the switch and various places on the pipe and they're all showing 50-90 volts for some reason. I dinked around for a while troubleshooting, disconnecting various things and replacing pieces of wire but I can't explain it. Eventually the pump stops turning on completely. We had a nearby rancher get electrocuted in a well pit a couple years back, so even though I'm pretty confident with electrical stuff I decide to quit fucking with it and call the local well repair people. They figured out that the powerline coming into the pit is faulty and they noticed than even the walls of the pit had some juice to them. They pulled the well and put a new pump on but tell me I need to replace the power coming in to the pit.
They left me a piece of direct bury wire but I decided to put it in conduit so back to town for that. I had this guy actively filling in the hole as I dug it...
But it turns out I can out-dig a gopher so I got it trenched across.
Put the wire into the conduit and the conduit into the trench, filled in the trench, wired everything back up in the pit, turned on the juice and it pressured up! But...
Another rusted out fitting. Fuck.
I decide that these fittings are probably all shit, so I go back to the store and replace all of the fittings with brass. All except one long galvanized nipple because they don't have one that long in brass. It costs $120 but I'm sick of this shit.
Put it all back together...
It pressures up and everything looks good so I go to the basement and turn on the water into the house...
Apparently the pressure is higher now and the sediment filter gave out. Back to town for a new sediment filter, get it home and find out that if you don't have copper pipes, you have to buy an optional mounting bracket. One more trip to the hardware store and I really hope that today I'm going to get the water into the house. What a pain in the ass.
