It’s been a day of firsts!
Some, better than others.
This morning, I harvested our first garlic scapes! Not a lot, but enough to enjoy today.
The strawberries in the wattle weave bed had one ripe berry to harvest.
It was quite tasty. 😄
I also saw our first female winter squash blossom! That was quite a surprise, since they don’t usually show up until later. The flower was oddly closed, though. It wasn’t until later that I saw why. One of the vine’s tendrils had wrapped itself around the petals before they opened! So when the outer edges of the petals did open, they were “strangled” and there was no access to the inside for pollinating. I did take off the tendril which, unfortunately, broke off most of the petals. We’ll see if the remaining parts of the petals will finish opening up to allow pollination.
When coming back inside after doing my morning rounds, I saw an adorable sight.
I’m so glad the kittens like that cat cage!
Later on, I needed to make a run to the post office, and saw another adorable sight.
Barely.
Brussel and her sprouts were snuggled in the tall grass! This is the first official, confirmed sighting of her with her babies.
I am not sure if any of them have shown up in the sun room or not. I couldn’t even see how many there were. Two, for sure, but if there was more, I couldn’t tell.
The final “first” of the day was…
… using our new drain auger.
I’d gone to check on the septic pump, when I realized it was running, but no one had used any water recently. I hadn’t heard it earlier, because I have the fan going in my room, and my room is pretty much the only place where it can be heard.
— major interruption as I fought with the septic pump and tank, again —
Oh, man.
Where was I…
Right… I checked the pump’s filter, and it was running dry. No liquid flowing through. I shut off the pump manually, primed the filter with fresh water then turned it on again. Sometimes, that’s enough. The pump, when it first turns on, shakes a bit, so before turning it on, I like to grab the outflow pipe to hold it steady.
The pipe was hot.
The pump was running dry for so long, and got so hot, the pipe itself was hot!!
That is NOT a good thing!
For the last while, when this happens, I would run a hose through the access pipe in the floor. I can tell where there are some bottlenecks and, by the length of hose pushed through, can generally tell when it’s all the way into the solids side of the tank. With the water turned on, I can usually push through any blockages and eventually get it so that, when the pump it turned back on, it no longer runs dry. Which means the float has dropped far enough.
I know. This shouldn’t work. The hose is in the solids side. The float is in the liquid side. But it works.
This time, it didn’t. Instead, I basically hit a wall, and the hose would go no further.
Worse, fluid was backing up the access pipe enough to start overflowing the floor drain.
Well, there’s a reason we got that drain auger. Now we just had to get it down the stairs.
The problem is the stairs. These are steeper than usual, with narrower steps. Just going down them, I basically turn myself sideways, using both the hand rail and the wall, and go down one step at a time.
With the help of my husband, though, I was able to get it part way down, and then I could carefully maneuver it the rest of the way on my own.
Then I spent some time reading over the manual again.
Unfortunately, the schematics in the manual did not show how the belt was supposed to be attached. The photos looked like colour photos that had been photocopied as black and white, so I couldn’t even see where a belt might be. As far as I could tell, there was only one way for it to go, and that was around the drum that the cable is rolled up in. I finally just went on my computer, looked up the order and the colour photos. There, I could actually see the belt around the drum.
The tips are secured with a screw and tightened with an Allen key that came with the auger.
It was missing.
I know it was there when I unpacked it, but it was not where I put it.
Someone will probably find it with their feet at some point, wherever the cats left it.
*sigh*
I do have a tool kit with Allen keys in both metric and imperial, so I was able to use that.
The next hour or so was spent using the different tips to clear the pipe. The water didn’t drain, though – until I remembered the pump was still off! That got turned on, and things cleared. Yay! All done!
Right?
Wrong.
The pump ran for a while, then started running dry again. So that got shut off.
I tried pushing the hose through and there was still that bottleneck a couple of feet past the wall. I ran the auger through again, then the hose. Eventually, I could determine that the pipe itself was clear; the problem was in the tank. With the pump running properly again, though, and so much well water being used to clear things up, the pump and the outflow pipe were so cold, there was condensation on them.
However, things were working again, so everything got cleaned up and put away… and there was much cleaning up to do. I had expected to find tree roots blocking things, but nope. No sign of roots. Just… solids, shall we say.
I just can’t seem to wash up well enough to feel clean again.
After I started writing about all this, I realized I had the fan going, and was I hearing the septic pump running or not? I shut off the fan, and yes, it was running.
I went to check, and discovered it had been running dry, long enough for the outflow pipe to be starting to get warm again.
This time, in pushing the hose through, I hit that barrier again, far enough from the basement wall that it had to be in the tank itself.
WTF?
This time, I got my husband to be in the basement while I went to check the tank.
After putting on a latex gripper thing I don’t know the name of, that attached to the ear pieces of my glasses and goes around the back of the head, to ensure they don’t fall off. I am forever paranoid that when I look down from a height, my glasses will fall off, and that last thing I want is for them to fall off into the septic tank!
Now, with the pump running dry, I expected to find it drained and the float visible at the liquid side of the tank. From above, you can see a larger opening over the liquid side and and a smaller opening over the solids side. A few feet above is the pipe that the float’s cord runs through from the basement, directing it over the solids side and above the liquid side.
When I opened the tank, it was over full, and just a foot below the pipe the float’s cord runs though.
This is not a good thing. Not at all!
I got my husband to the pump on.
No change. I could see some sort of bubbling on the solids side, but that’s it.
That would have been from water running through the hose at the time.
When there was no sign of the contents being pumped out, I covered the tank again, then headed back to the basement. The pump was still running, but it was running dry! At that point, I was able to relieve my husband from duty. 😉
Not only did the pump not drain the tank (we shut it off manually again), but water was backing up to the basement again.
It turned out the hose was still on.
With the hose off, I kept pushing it back and forth. It was definitely moving easier. After a few minutes, I turned the pump back on and…
It started training the tank!!!
So I hung around like a mother hen as it ran, until the filter suddenly emptied and it started running dry again. I still had the hose handy, so I primed the filter again, then ran it through and turned it the water on. After pushing it through a few times, I turned the pump back on. It started running for about half a second, then shut itself off.
Once that was done, I went back out to look into the tank. I could once again see the top of the tank, with the two openings. I could see the float on the one side…
It seems to be sitting on something.
I really don’t know what it was I was looking it. It just seemed to me like there was something in the tank.
We’re going to have to get it emptied. Especially since it overfilled the way it did.
So I called the septic guy. As I was explaining what was going on, he was quite perplexed. My using the hose like I do should not make a difference, because it’s in a different part of the tank.
After more descriptions and questions from the septic guy, he does have one theory. Because the pump does shake when it first turns on, he thinks we have an air leak. Most likely, the shaking has caused a crack, probably on the underside of where the pipe from the tank is attached to the filter. He won’t know until he sees it, though.
He’ll be coming out late tomorrow morning. A basic pump out will be $160. He won’t know if it’ll cost more than that until he sees what’s going on, and if he is able to do any repairs.
My older daughter, bless her, will be able to cover the cost. It’ll just take a few days for the PayPal funds to be transferred. (While I was doing all this, she was a sweetheart and did the cooking, etc., too)
Which means tonight, I should probably head to my bank and take out some cash to at least pay for the pump put. If it costs more, I can pay him the rest later.
Or maybe tomorrow morning. I really don’t want to go anywhere right now.
I think I’ll go wash again, then call it a night!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 