But it could be worse!
Some places are getting snow! Or a rain/snow mix.
I was able to finish mowing the East yard, which is where the lowest part of the inner yard is. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but through the short grass, you can see the water extending well beyond the little pond in front of the outhouse. The moat around the garage is back, and I’ve been watching the driveway on the garage cam slowly fill with water.
While we have reached 7C/45F out there, we still have a wind chill of -4C/26F It’s gotten cold enough in the house, I turned the furnace back up again!
Amazingly, we still have three fires going in our province! All well to the north of us. Two are under control, and one is “being held” – that one is what’s left of a much larger fire that burned out of control for some time.
The rain, however, is now supposed to continue through to tomorrow evening, instead of ending around noon.
Thankfully, we got those errands done yesterday, don’t need to go anywhere in this. I feel for the people who have to be out there right now!
There is one disconcerting thing, though.
When I’m at my computer, I’m basically right above the septic pump, so I’m basically the only one that can hear it go off. Especially now, when we’ve got both of the new blowers, plus fans, running to try and keep things drier in the old basement. Since we had the pill switch replaced, only once before did we have a situation where it wouldn’t shut off again. It basically fixed itself, though.
Well, as I was working on this post, it happened again. I could hear a change in the sound that immediately got my attention – I’m pretty paranoid about that, these days! I went down to check, and the pump was running, but I could see now water flowing through the filter. It was empty. So I shut off the pump manually, primed the filter, and tried again. The filter emptied, no new water started to flow, and the pump kept running, dry.
So for the last while, I did things like switch out the filter basket (it didn’t seem clogged, but I changed it anyhow). We keep an old hose that’s missing its female connector down there, permanently hooked up to the cold water tap from when the washing machine used to be down there. It makes refilling the filter very handy, but I even sent water running into the inflow opening, at the top of the filter, in case there was something blocking it. It seemed fine. Each time I did something, I tried turning the pump back on again, and it would empty the filter and keep running dry again.
Finally, I opened up the floor drain and sent the hose through, all the way to the tank. That meant fighting to get it through the bottleneck that’s somewhere between the wall and the tank it keeps getting caught on. I suspect that bottleneck is the source of quite a few of our problems. After I got it through, I turned the water on to flush things in the pipe, then ran the hose in the other direction, towards the weeping tile under the new basement, then back to the septic tank again.
Then I turned the power to the pump back on and…
… it stayed off.
After I got back upstairs, my older daughter, who is getting up for her night of working on commissions, checked with me. She could hear that something was going on, and she wanted to know if it was safe to shower! Which is was. Once I heard the septic pump turn on again, I went into the basement and watched the water flowering through the filter. Everything seemed fine, and the pump turned itself off, as it normally would.
This makes me think that there is something the float is getting hung up on every now and then, so it’s not dropping far enough to tell the pump to shut off. Whatever it is, running the hose through seems to have cleared it.
At times like this, I wish we had a gravity system, instead of a pump one! We would just need to make sure the septic field gets insulated every winter. No pumps to worry about, and no electricity needed. I do understand why my dad set up the pump system. There really isn’t anyplace in the inner yard to have a septic field. Too many large trees and their roots to mess things up.
Ah, well. Dealing with this stuff just comes with the territory!
No different than having to deal with moats around the garage and sopping wet driveways! 😄
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 