Tractor Sprinkler and Bat Attack6/8/14Mosquito bites fading. Must be time to head north again. No School this weekend. We just couldn't make it. We haven't had a day off in weeks. Elizabeth's job is long, unpredictable hours and spring at a bike shop isn't the best time for side projects either. Instead we went for a walk by the river and did some long and short term planning. We really need to get back on track with the well and septic if we're going to finish all of the outdoor stuff in time for the winter projects. |
6/12/14Heading up to the Schoolhouse with mom today. Hopefully we will finally get the well tested and find out that the sod is okay. |
6/13/1590% of the sod is still alive and we are no closer to knowing the viability of the well (despite Herculean efforts). |
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The pump Elizabeth bought at Home Depot advertises pumping 240 gallons of water per hour from a depth of 20'. Our well is 20' deep at the bottom. It is only 12' to the water table. The Flotec Utility Pump, however, is little more than a glorified aquarium pump. Here's how it went down. I tore into the packaging and started reading one of the three manuals. The first instruction described a priming process that involved a 1/2 tablespoon of mineral or vegetable oil. Something with which the schoolhouse is not yet equipped. "Not to worry," I'm paraphrasing, "We at Flotec have provided you with three 1/2 tablespoon packets of mineral oil for just this kind of oversight." I poured the entire first 1/2 tablespoon packet into the "in" side before I noticed that it was pretty much entirely draining out of the "out" side. Instructions followed. Moving forward. I picked up a 120' outdoor extension cord weeks ago in preparation for this moment and I was excited to see it perform. I found an outlet in our future bathroom, climbed up to unlock the window (the windows are huge and awesome), and pushed the cord through the opening. Outside, the cord reached all of the way to the well. Success. This appeared to be a piece of cake, so well organized were we. I attached the hoses to the in and out sides of the pump and dropped one into the well. The moment of truth. I went to plug the pump into the glorious extension cord and found out that I'd been sold a 120' outdoor extension cord with only two prongs. Notice that I didn't say that I purchased this cord, but that I was sold this useless pile of copper and plastic. I mean what are the percentage of outdoor projects for which one needs only a non-grounded two prong cord? Seriously, unnamed retailer. Why are you even stocking this product? Clearly this is not my fault. By some miracle, I had grabbed a 20' THREE-pronged extension cord at the last second as I ran out of the house before we left. Time to find out the value of all those junk hoses I picked up at Bloomington's Dumpster Days. I swapped out the cords, put the pump on the porch, and attached two hoses to the "in" side of the pump, just long enough to get me to the bottom of the well. I plugged in the pump. Nothing. I waited twice the thirty seconds the instructions recommended. I shut it down and used up our second 1/2 tablespoon mineral oil packet (as recommended). I tried again. Nothing. The pump hums loudly when powered on and has something of a squirrel sized death-rattle emanating from the out hose when nothing is being pumped but air. This is not a comforting sound when nothing is going right and another weekend trip is passing you by. Frankly I still didn't even know if the pump worked or if I was using it properly. I had two buckets. I set up a five gallon bucket on the porch ABOVE the pump. This meant the pump would actually only have to pump water DOWN toward itself. I used a two gallon bucket and a bit of rope to haul up enough water out of the well to fill the five gallon bucket. I installed the hose and turned on the pump. The death rattle faded. Water! With proof of concept behind me I started moving things toward the well in stages. First, I moved the five gallon bucket as close to the well as the first hose would allow and tested the pump again. Water. Next, I topped off the bucket, dropped the end of the second hose into the well, turned on the pump so that the first hose would begin draining the bucket, and then attached the first and second hose together underwater inside the bucket in the hopes that this would provide the necessary suction to pull water up from the well. No luck. I repeated this test twice, froze my hands in extremely cold well water, and gave up. I knew the pump could pull water downhill, but I didn't know if it could pump water through 100 feet of hose. Next I hooked up both hoses together and set the five gallon bucket on top of the car. Water! Now the tricky part. Again I topped off the five gallon bucket on top of the car by hauling up two gallon bucketfuls of water up by hand, dropped the end of 100 feet of hose into the bucket, and turned on the pump. When the water started flowing, I moved the bucket with the water and hose still inside to the top of the well and lowered both into the well simultaneously to insure that the pump was pulling water the whole time. By the time the end of the hose reached the water in the well the pump would stop sucking and start sucking, if you know what I mean. Two hours of Macgyver shit and I was still not watering the grass (let alone getting any closer to draining the well TWICE so that we could get a clean sample). I checked in with mom. She was happy enough to keep planting lilies, lilacs, and tomatoes (the tomatoes are not going to make it. I'm going on the record right now), so I moved into phase three. The pump could move water if it were at ground level. This meant, if I could keep up with it, I could theoretically attach enough hoses together to water the sod if I brought the water to the top of the well by hand. I strung out probably 200' of hose AND...wait for it...THE TRACTOR SPRINKLER! With one end of a hose in the five gallon bucket, I hauled up enough water to fill it and have an extra two gallons ready to top it off. Then I turned on the pump. It only took a few moments for the sprinkler to start spinning and the wheels to start turning and the grass to start drinking. It was glorious. And backbreaking. |
Tractor sprinkler! The sod's first man-made drink. 8/1/14
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Over the next hour and a half I hauled up about 80 gallons of water two gallons at a time while running to check on and move the sprinkler intermittently. (I don't think it should go without mentioning here that the pump that is supposed to move 240 gallons per hour up 20' was now moving less than a quarter of that horizontally.) I had to run to keep the bucket from running dry and forcing me to reprime the whole system. At least at first. Slowly the pump pumped less and less water per minute. Eventually there wasn't enough pressure to keep the sprinkler spinning and the tractor stopped tracking. I had to move it by hand, but there was less urgency because the bucket wasn't draining as quickly. |
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Sunset after a day with mom. 6/13/14
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As the sun set at 9:00 (a wonderful thing), I was pretty sure the grass had been poorly watered and the well seemed to have just as much water in it as when I'd started. But the lilies, lilac, and those poor tomatoes were in the ground and it was great to spend the day with my mom, something that too rarely happens anymore. And that's the whole point. |
6/14/14Minneapolis. 5:00pm and we still haven't left. This is ridiculous. All day packing for an overnight at the schoolhouse. Last night Elizabeth realized that the Annunciation School Rummage Sale is this weekend and that this was our chance to get great prizes for the schoolhouse and the wedding. We got up at 7:30am to be in line by 8:00 in hopes of snatching the best pick of the deals. Just a quick errand before heading up north. We shopped for two hours, spent $40 on bedding and fabric and dishes and vases and books and clothes and a futon frame and a chair and a mirror and some extension cords and plenty of other miscellaneous things. Elizabeth was very happy. Then it started to rain. We'd brought the pickup truck because we thought maybe we'd get a bed frame or even a mattress. We did get the futon frame but it folded up small enough that we probably could have gotten it into the car. So now, ironically, because we'd planned for extra capacity we had the added problem of figuring out how to keep all of this stuff dry in the back of the pickup truck when everything would have been perfectly fine in the back of the little Toyota. We went to the hardware store to buy a tarp. We also got a bunch of trash bags and pretty much doubled our budget on supplies for keeping things dry on the drive home. It took another two hours to get everything wrapped and loaded in the rain. Yuck. Came home. Ate lunch. Elizabeth ran to Target for even more plastic. I started loading the truck. Five hours later and somehow we're still not ready. How can we be so bad at this? |
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Yes, we do need five glasses on the table. 6/14/14
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10:30pm45 degrees! It's mid June! 45 degrees. Three of the four walls are insulated. Not that it matters. The wind howls through the wood stove. You can see daylight (during the day) around the edges of the back door. At least we won't die of carbon monoxide poisoning. I put on my sweatshirt when we got here. I added my jacket after dinner. Now I'm wearing my winter hat. We haven't tried the wood stoves yet and frankly they make me nervous. We don't know if the stovepipes are properly sealed. Also there may be a family of swallows nesting in the chimney and it's hard to justify delivering them a horrible midnight death so that I can get a good night's sleep. |
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The basement wood stove has some drawing issues. 5/25/14
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The good stuff. The wind is fierce, but the house doesn't creek and a quick search revealed no leaks. Elizabeth cleaned all of the mouse poop off of the dinner table (which is fresh from the last time we cleaned it off), laid out a tablecloth, and prepared a very lovely meal of bread, cheese, and fruit (Avocado is a fruit, right?) topped off with candlelight. Those little things go a long way. We're working on cleaning out the front room, which was probably the cloakroom, so we can put that futon frame to good use. Can't wait to crawl into bed. Nothing gets me tired like packing to go up to the schoolhouse. |
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6/15/14Bat! We spent quite a bit of time setting up the bedroom. I was taking pictures of the various stages of assembly (see pictures). For no reason in particular I glanced up into a hole in the ceiling. On one of the exposed beams ten feet above my head, was a little brown ball of fur. You have no idea the fear this strikes in me. Bats eat mosquitos. They don't want to be around people. They have very tiny teeth and claws if it even comes to that. None of that helps me in the slightest. In my opinion, bats are about the most terrifying thing on earth. Thankfully, Elizabeth takes rabies very seriously. This meant that she would have a strong motivation to have the bat removed from our sleeping quarters. While I was hopping around and shaking my hands furiously, Elizabeth put on a bunch of protective clothing and prepared to do battle. Of course, her slightly than less rational concern about rabies does not make her a serious threat to a bat. Why should a vicious rabid bat suffer any harm for our benefit? Battle is a strong word. Lucky for the bat, Elizabeth was on the job. No handy tennis rackets, so she donned a window screen and engaged the evil creature. For my part, shutting the two of them in the small cloakroom seemed like the only practical thing to do. Elizabeth took about five minutes to develop a technique for gently sweeping the creature out of the air and trapping it securely under the window screen. When you are close up to a frightened bat, you can hear them shriek and click. It sounds like a tiny fur covered ball of hell. |
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Somehow we scooped the little bat into a sheet and wrapped it up into a ball. The sheet went into a large cooking pot. The lid was duct taped VERY securely to the top of the pot. It then became my job (at 1:00 in the morning) to drive the bat a significant distance from the schoolhouse and release her. Elizabeth began referring to the bat as "her." It was like driving with a cargo of velociraptors. During the next half an hour I nearly drove off the road several times while I tried to keep an eye on the pot. Then I had to undo the duct tape while standing on the lid to keep it sealed. Dumping the sheet onto the road was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do. The sheet spread out on the ground. The bat crawled out. Then it hopped up four or five inches and flew away. Why did I stick around to see that the bat got off safely? Elizabeth. I jumped back in the truck, spun the tires as I put the pedal on the floor, and drove like a bat out of hell. (Sorry) When I returned to the schoolhouse Elizabeth had turned the cloakroom/bedroom into a hermetically sealed safe room with tarps and duct tape. We went to bed wondering if we would suffocate, but reasonably assured that no bats would get us. |
Father's DayElizabeth's parents and sister drove up this afternoon for a barbecue, but they got a late start and I had to leave just after they arrived. But reportedly everyone was very impressed. Good food was had by all. And they were able to pump a thousand gallons of water out of the well (new, better pump)! We still don't know if the water is drinkable, but it refills faster than we can pump it out of the ground, so it's a great option for watering the grass, of which there is going to be a lot. |
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The wildflowers. 8/1/14
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Elizabeth's family also helped plant and mulch a handful of fruit trees and accomplished a lot of cleaning. They also shored up the tomato plants that had suffered greatly in our short absence. Really more was accomplished by this practiced team after I left than I have accomplished in my several previous visits. Thank you Richardson/Turkes! |
NEXT POST: Locals, Lore, and the End of Main Street |
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Conne, Elizabeth, and Laura in the crow's nest. 6/15/14
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