Mother’s Day, Baked Potatoes, Submersible Pumps and Pitless Adapters…

I thought that today would be just like most Mother’s Day until our next door neighbor knocked on our door last evening to ask my husband if he knew anything about wells and pumps because his had stopped pumping water.  They left and assessed the situation and decided that there wasn’t anything they could do about it at 7 pm on a Saturday evening so they went about running garden hoses from our home to theirs.  When my husband got home I realized that the grocery store was already closed for the evening and I wasn’t able to pick up the potatoes for the Mother’s Day dinner at my brother in-laws.  We went to bed and decided that I would have enough time to get the potatoes in the morning get them washed, wrapped in foil, and in the oven to bake while we were at church.

I got up early this morning, showered and headed into the grocery store to find that they were all out of russet potatoes which meant a trip to the next town from our 16 miles away.  The time was getting short to accomplish everything before I needed to be at church to teach Sunday School but I got back home and got the potatoes washed and ready for the oven.  My daughter finished up getting the potatoes into the oven while I left for Sunday School.  Sunday school went fine with my sixth grade boys and girls but they were more chatty than ever but still good.  After church we came home and grabbed the potatoes and toppings and headed over for the Mother’s Day dinner.  We ate and visited for about three hours and headed home to start working on the well next door.  While the guys worked on the well I cut grass until they needed another set of hands.

My husband and I learned a lot about wells because we had to work on our well last fall but the neighbors well set up was a different set up than ours but we figured it out.  We had to get our tow truck to help hoist the submersible pump up from the well.  We would wrap a chain around the pipe that the pump was attached to and hoist it up 10 feet at a time.  Then we had to unscrew that section of pump and hoist another 10′ at a time.  We did this until we had all 5 sections removed.  The last two sections managed to give our neighbor and me a cold shower as we unscrewed them.  At last we had the submersible pump out so the guys could check everything out and decide which parts need to be replaced and purchased.

My husband and I are not employed in the well repair business but this is the third well that we have helped repair.  We always refer to our neighbor as the “Energizer Bunny”  He is constantly doing something in his yard and has basically rebuilt his home from the inside out since they bought it seven years ago but it didn’t know about wells or pumps .  Our neighbor is a lot like my husband who says ” I’d rather eat lint than admit I can’t do something!”  So over the years we have learned how to do many things for ourselves.  There isn’t much we won’t tackle together.  Tomorrow after work we will go back to our neighbors and reverse the process as we lower the new submersible pump, pitless adapter into the well casing and get the water pumping again.  At least the weather was much warmer than when we worked on our well last fall.  Today the sun was shining and it was about 60 degrees.  Last fall when we worked on ours in was raining, 35 degrees and dark because of the short winter days.

My neighbor’s wife said that she was thankful to be celebrating Mother’s Day after a nice shower this morning and will probably remember this Mother’s Day for a very long time.  Me, too!

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