I’ve mentioned before that I (we? maybe it’s K’s fault!) seem to be cursed with water problems. Since we like our current house, and the well is drawing very acidic water, we’ll probably continue to have water problems. Two of the more recent ones:
- Two months ago, we started noticing that the average daily water usage (as shown on the water softener) had gone from 60 gal/day to over 100 gal/day in a very short period of time, maybe two days. Needless to say, K and I were more than a little concerned with where all that water was going. So I ducked under the house and heard the water pump quick cycling: on, off, on, off… Well that’s not supposed to happen. It’s supposed to kick on when the house pressure drops to 30psi, and turn off when it hits 40. We called a plumber, because I’ll do a lot of plumbing, but anything like the water pump that combines water, electricity and problems underground is way out of my league.  Turned out that we needed a new pressure tank (my guess: the acidic water ate away at the inner lining of the air bladder). Joy.
- The next month, the power bill came in very high. Our first thought was, “well, the pump was on a lot last month, so maybe that’s the problem.” It came in high again the next month. We started looking for the source, keeping a log of power use and finally, on Sunday resorted to shutting off all power in the house and adding the breakers back one at a time. I should have guessed – the pump was using a lot of power. Went under the house, watched the pressure build to 40psi, the pump cut off and all the pressure drained back out of the lines until the pump came on again. The cycle repeated on maybe a 30 second period with a 50% duty cycle. Yay! my pump was running half the day. This time, the plumber found that there was a leak at the pump itself and all the water was being dumped back down the well. On the bright side, we weren’t wasting water – just power. 🙁
One fun thing did come out of all of this, we bought a digital, in-house electricity meter.