plumbing

Here we go again, again!… again

/ Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

Okay, first things first.

Yes!!! We can use our plumbing again!

But no, the problem has not been fixed. In fact, it hasn’t even been identified.

When my brother got here, the first thing we did was see if the problem was with the pump itself.

I have learned a lot about this pump today!

The back valve was removed, and it was fine. Just a bit of gunk that would not have affected how it worked.

Since it was off anyhow, I gave it a thorough cleaning, along with the length of pipe and elbow that would be reattached to it.

From what we could see inside the back valve’s opening, the disc-type thing that would spin was also clear.

The pump has clean out valves, though. I had no idea what they were and couldn’t even see one of them without having to look around the outflow pipe from the filter. That was the next thing to check. Those have probably never been opened before, but my brother managed it. He took the bottom one out first, which was the drain, which is when we got a real hands on idea of just how much water is in that pump’s cannister section!

Trying to see into those openings was not easy. My brother got me to turn the pump’s switch on and off quickly, just so he could see things turning inside, using his phone as a flashlight. Everything looked fine. He did some cleaning around the thread and even poked around with a wire, but it was not all that gunky, either.

With everything checked and cleared, we tried again.

The pump ran, but no change. No water would flow.

Okay, maybe we just needed to prime the pump.

I had no idea there was a valve for that. As with the cleanout valves, it took a lot to get it open. Once it was, we used the hose I keep hooked up to the old laundry’s cold water tap all the time, because it’s just so handy. Once it was full, he closed it up again (making sure to Teflon tape everything, along the way), and we tested it again.

Nothing. No flow at all. The only change I could tell was that, with everything all nice and clean, the motor was running a bit quieter.

Okay, the pump seemed to be working. Could it be that something was blocking the tank’s outflow pipe?

There was only one thing left to do.

Put the emergency diverter back on.

If it worked after that, then we knew the problem was not at the house end.

Thankfully, when we switched it out before, I told my brother to just leave it aside. I would put it away in the spring, and then reseal the hole in the wall that it runs through. Which meant it was just a matter of switching pipes.

The outflow pipe from the pump to the ejector, however, always has water in it. It’s just a gravity thing. So we got a bucket handy before starting to take it off. As soon as my brother wrestled it loose, I got the bucket under it, so we did manage to catch most of it, but not all!

Yeah. I got splashed.

That out and set aside, the diverter was put back on. After double and triple checking that every thing was tight, we tried again.

Yes!!! It worked! Finally, the septic tank was draining!

My brother and I headed outside to check the other end, while my daughter stayed to monitor the pump. It emptied the tank and shut itself off before my brother and I could get to where it drains into!

Which means that the problem is somewhere from the house to the ejector.

We went to check the ejector.

The heat tape was not warm, but it has a regulator and will shut itself off based on temperature. Today has been a warm day, and is still warming up (as I write this, I see we just reached 0C/32F), so that makes sense. The extension cord’s plug has an indicator light on it, so we could see that it had power. Everything looked fine.

That doesn’t mean it’s not the ejector, though. It just means, we know it’s not frozen.

What it could be is that there is gunk in the venturi valve that finally just blocked the whole thing. The only way to know for sure is to pull it out. Which would require removing the heat tape, unscrewing the elbow at the top, unscrewing the cap, and removing both, then very carefully pulling the venturi pipe out of the stand pipe, so we can see the valve at the bottom.

Which we will NOT do until spring.

Yup. We’re on the emergency diverter for the rest of the winter, at least.

If it’s not the venturi valve being blocked, then it’s the pipe itself. A build up of crud inside the pipe could have come loose or something and blocked it entirely. Based on how well the water flowed out of the ejector after we got it thawed out and hooked up again, the pipe was running pretty clear. The only real hint that there was a problem was that it took longer for the pump to empty the tank than it did before.

There is nothing we can do about it until the ground thaws out.

Once the diverter was set up and working, my brother was prepared for another job.

Installing the power diverter switch.

The pump could be turned on and off using what is basically a light switch on the wall. Under normal circumstances this is in the “on” position at all times. The pump itself is triggered by the float and pill switch, inside the tank.

Sometimes, however, there is a need to check the pump, when the tank is not full enough to trigger it on. With all the septic problems we’ve been having, we needed to be able to turn it on manually, from inside the basement. The alternative would be to open up the septic can and use something long enough to catch the cable and raise the float. That’s something we want to avoid doing even in the summer. Not a chance, in the winter!

My brother set up a couple of wires set up outside the switch box that would allow us to turn it on manually. The pump’s switch would be turned off, the wires outside the box would be attached to each other, the switched turned on again, and the pump would run. When we were done testing it, we’d turn off the switch, undo the wires, cover and tuck them away again, then turn the switch back on so the pump could be triggered by the float again.

Well, not anymore.

This is how it was set up before.

You can see the black covered wires from the pill switch coming up from below and into the box. The two wires sticking out the side from the same opening were the ones that could be joined to turn the pump on manually.

There was no schematic, so my brother had to be particularly careful in figuring out what was what. There were the wires from the breaker box (which was off, of course), the wires from the pill switch, the wires from the motor, the ground wires, and the manual diverter wires that all had to be kept track of!

He installed a new box, got all the wired sort out and attached to new switched, and put it all together, with one special feature, which you can see by clicking through to the next image (which Instagram, once again, messed with, so it’s off to once side instead of centred. *sigh*).

The manual switch has a safety cover on it, so that there is on way it can be turned on by accident!

Then he left the blue protective film on more me, because I commented on how I liked the blue colour. 😄

Of course, once everything was together – and before it was all closed up – the breaker was turned on and it was tested. I even made sure to get video of him explaining the which wires were which, so we can refer to it in the future, if need be.

My brother is so awesome. I don’t know what we would do without him! It even came up in our conversation today; my brother is the last living person who really knows this place. Another reason why I try to document everything, and learn as much as I can from him!!!

Once he was done with all this and his tools were safely put away and to the side, I did the floor pipe maintenance thing with the hose, showing him where I was hitting bottlenecks – except the second bottleneck wasn’t there! Or, at least, the hose passed through the opening just right, because he was there. 😄

Once that was done, I helped him haul all his tool boxes, bins and bags up and to his vehicle while my daughter, sweetheart that she is, took care of washing and disinfecting the floor. Mostly with one arm, since her ganglion is just not going away this time.

My brother may have finished up in the basement, but not with here! After loading up his car again, he went on to do things in their various storage areas for a couple more hours! Hopefully, the roads will be gone. We have just reached our high of the day; 2C/36F and are starting to get a bit of mixed rain and snow. We’re supposed to stay at this temperature through to tomorrow, even overnight.

Meanwhile, one of the first things I did was call dibs on the shower, after having been splashed while switching out that pipe. The honeypot has been put away, and we no longer have to use basins and buckets to keep water from draining into the full septic tank.

It feels so good to be able to shower again!

And use a flushing toilet instead of the honeypot.

Ah, the things we put up with to live here! 😄😄😄

The Re-Farmer

It’s going to be a while…

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Before I update on our whole septic pump situation, I just had to share this.

The cold hasn’t quite let go yet; when I headed out to give the outside cats their kibble and warm water, we were actually still at the coldest part of the “night”.

I was back inside when I got the above screen cap. -27C/-17F with a wind chill of -32C/-26F The south yard is sheltered from today’s wind, though, so it wasn’t feeling that cold.

If you click through to the next picture, you can see what the cold did!

I was putting kibble into the tray under the water bowl shelter, and my puffy park sleeve brushed against the solar powered light under the roof.

Brushed. Barely touched. Something I’ve probably done many a time and never noticed.

The plastic was so cold and brittle, it broke right off.

It still works, though. For now, I just draped the cord around the remains of the holder on the frame, and the light is hanging down. I don’t know how well the motion sensor will pick things up like that, but it should still turn on at least sometimes.

Today we’re looking at a high of -14C/7F, which is going to make things much more pleasant for when my daughter and I have to head out for our medical appointments. The drive is about 45 minutes on the highway, which isn’t too bad, and I’m happy to have gotten that tire check, yesterday. That’s one less worry! Tomorrow, I have errands for my mother, and then we don’t have to drive anywhere until I’m taking the truck to the garage for the engine flush/oil change/sensor replacement BEFORE we start doing our stock up shopping trips to the city. I will be very happy to have the check engine light off and the oil pressure gauge working again.

Not as happy as we will be once we get that septic pump working again.

Which, unfortunately, won’t be for a while.

My brother called last night and we talked about it. Unfortunately, his schedule is so insane, the earliest he can come out is Sunday – and he wasn’t completely sure of that, either. The alternative is to call a plumber but 1) who knows if they’d be able to come any earlier and 2) neither of us are comfortable with that. Our system is not common and, in some ways, unique. I don’t know that I’d trust someone to work on it that has never seen it before. There are just too many things that could be broken, if work isn’t done in the right sequence.

After looking at the video I sent him, my brother is not convinced the problem is the back valve, though that would be the first thing to check. He described how this pump works, and some work he’d done on it in the past. Some pumps use a piston to get the water flowing, which can wear out and break down relatively quickly. This pump has something he describes as a hockey puck. A disk that spins. The disk has texture on it, and that spinning gets the water flowing. This spinning disk system lasts much longer and is less likely to break. However, if the disk isn’t spinning, the pump could be running, but there would be no flow happening.

He has had to work on this before, during the years we lived in other provinces. Something had gotten caught in the disk. He had to take it out, unwrap the stringy whatever it was to clear the disk (remember, ladies: don’t flush tampons!), then put it all back together again. It has been working fine ever since.

Part of why he thinks this might be a problem is a noise he could hear in one of the videos I sent him. That noise actually didn’t start until I restarted the pump again to take the video, but the pump also has an almost grinding sound. Nothing huge, but a sort of sound I might not have noticed, if I didn’t already know how the pump was supposed to sound like. If the pump is running dry because it’s not pulling water from the septic tank, that could be the bearings getting worn out, which would make that sound.

He’s really hoping he doesn’t have to replace the pump. This brand no longer exists, and the only other brand around right now is made in China. That’s it. No one else seems to make these pumps anymore. The type of pump that is more common is a pump that is installed IN the septic tank and is fully immersed. Which is supposed to be much better, but I have a real problem with that. It would require excavating the tank to install one and, if anything goes wrong, the tank would have to be excavated again to repair or replace it. My brother that to get the tank excavated to access the pipes, back when my father was still living here, and it cost him $5000. It would easily cost much more than that, to get that sort of work done, today.

So we are stuck with the system we have.

And stuck with not using our plumbing for at least another 4 days, including today.

Oh, we can still use our water. We just have to avoid draining anything into the septic tank. It is full, but not over full. Right now, the only water going in there is when we very quickly wash our hands in the bathroom, after using the honeypot, which would have negligible effect on the tank’s level. For anything else, we use basins and dump the water outside.

Speaking of honeypots.

I’d found the honeypot seat in a shed, years ago, and I am very thankful for it. It is designed to fit over any 5 gallon bucket, which we also found. This set up is great for a rare use.

We are using this thing a LOT more often than expected.

A 5 gallon bucket is not particularly stable; not when we have a houseful full of gimps. The size and shape of a seat that fits on a bucket is also… not easy to finish up on, shall we say.

So today, I’ve been looking at alternatives. It won’t be of any help for us now, but the way things have been going, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we will need something like this again.

We do actually have a fancy camp commode in the basement that is flushable. We found it while cleaning up the basements a few years ago, with water still in it. The problem is, the base is missing, so it can’t be used. It’s not something that could be put on top of a bucket or something, due to its design.

I started looking at medical commodes, like what home care provided for my mother, but ended up looking more at camp commodes, and even just a seat on a folding stand. A bag could be hung from the stand before the seat is put on but, for our use, it would be set up over the 5 gallon bucket. The thing I really like about that one – aside from the padded seat! – is that it’s taller. Almost as tall as the higher toilet we have, which would be easier on the knees.

That’s the kicker in looking at various designs. We all have various mobility issues; even the girls. These need to be taken into consideration. Plus, we wouldn’t be using this for camping, but to set up in our bathroom for when we have situations like right now, where we can’t use the plumbing. It’s not a particularly large bathroom, though there is more space if we store the bath chair in the tub while the honeypot is set up.

I had to laugh at my brother’s reaction when he found out we line the bucket with a garbage bag. I was telling him how we are using the stove pellets we use as cat litter in the bag to absorb moisture. Then, when the bag is changed out, it’s tied off and set in the old kitchen to freeze until we can go to the dump. He found that rather horrifying. He thought we were just using the bucket, without a liner of any kind, then dumping it in the bushes. Which is what I find rather horrifying! True, that’s what we did before we got running water in the house, when we used a bucket in the basement in the winter, because going to the outhouse just didn’t make sense with so many little ones (like me, at the time). I only vaguely remember the emptying of buckets, since I was too small to have been given the job. My brother, as the oldest of the boys, would have been doing it more often.

The thing is, if we don’t use a garbage bag and instead dump the contents in the bushes behind the outhouse (where we already have a litter compost pile), the bucket would need to be cleaned every time. Which is the part I shudder at. It’s not like we can use a hose to clean it out, like we could in the summer. We’d have to dump the contents, use the bathtub to clean the bucket, go out again to dump out the wash water, then rinse it and go back out again to dump the rinse water.

I’ll just use a garbage bag, thanks!

We might need to invest in biodegradable bin liners, though, given that we have had to use the honeypot so much more often than we ever expected! If we have those, then we could use the litter box compost instead of taking the bags to the dump.

Of all the plumbing problems we have had in this place, septic related ones have been the worst to deal with!

The Re-Farmer

Some good news, at least

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Oh, what a lovely day we are having today!

It’s bright and sunny, and we have reached a high of -16C/-3F, which feels so incredibly warm right now! The wind chill -20C/-4F, but comes from a direction we are sheltered from, so we’re actually feeling warmer, not colder, in the sun. Technically, we are still under an ongoing extreme cold weather warning, but looking at the weather map, we are just on the edge of the area covered by the warning. A reserve some distance to the north of us is no longer under the weather warning area, and they are warmer than we are right now.

The thermometer in the sun room was reading 5C/41F when I did the evening cat feeding. The outside cats were very active and enjoying the warmth and sun.

Meanwhile…

I got the truck to the garage so they could check the tire. It seemed like it was still holding air, but I needed to make sure there was no leak or damage anywhere. I had a general drop off time, not an appointment, so I after I handed over the keys , I got a very loose time frame.

While there, I checked my numbers and asked if I could move the oil change/engine flush/senor replacement up to early next week. I’d really prefer to have that done before I have all our city driving to do at the end of the month, and decided it was worth putting on my credit card. So that got switched to the 25th. The 26th is when we do our first stock up shopping trip, so that works out.

That done, I headed over to the DQ several blocks away. I just needed someplace where I could sit for about an hour. While placing my order, the guy behind the counter asked how I was doing. As we chatted, he commented that I was looking tired. I told him, I’d just dropped my truck off at the garage and… well… I was having “a day”.

The guy was so sweet about it, I got table side service, even for my drink, which I normally would have been given a cup to fill myself at the dining room fountain.

I took a loooong time, eating my onion rings and nursing my drink, which worked out for the better. My husband messaged me saying he’d just ordered a refill on a “take as needed” prescription for delivery tomorrow, unless I could pick it up. The pharmacy is about a block away from the DQ, so I headed over to get it. I went to the drop off counter, first, to see if it still needed to be filled. The pharmacist saw me, recognized me and came over – she had literally just finished getting it in the bag to set aside for delivery tomorrow, so she brought it right to me, instead. Perfect timing!

From there, it was back to the garage, where I found the truck in the bay. I asked about it and was told they hadn’t looked at it yet. He was just about to text me – there was no note on which tire it was, and he sees so many, he couldn’t remember which one they’d worked on. So I told him, and one of his mechanics took it off to check it, pretty much right away.

After a few minutes, he asked me if I’d filled it before coming over. I said I’d filled it yesterday. He told me, it was at 45 psi – right where I’d pumped it to. They could find no leak.

As we were talking, I told him of my concern that I might have driven over something, mentioning that a bin with light bulbs had been knocked over not long ago. I was pretty sure I’d swept up all the glass, but it’s entirely possible I missed some. So they understood my concern! There was no sign of damage anywhere.

I asked him why it would have been down to 30psi after several days, and his response was “… -45?” 😂 So basically, the tire was nice and warm when they replace the sensor and leaking valve, then came home to polar vortex temperatures, and the seal didn’t hold. Once I filled it again – in the cold – the seal held.

So that was a relief. I wasn’t charged for anything, either. I expect to at least be charged for their time, since they had to take the tire off and use their equipment to check it, but nope. No charge. That was very appreciated!

From there, I went to the grocery store across the street. I had three water jugs to refill. With the septic pump not draining again, my daughter also sent funds so I could pick up food that we could prepare while getting as few dishes dirty as possible!

I ended up getting more sandwich fixings (I use paper towel instead of a plate) and 4 different large fresh deli pizzas; one for each of us.

Plus more eggs. Because we can never have too many eggs!

We really need chickens. 😄

I know that in the US, with millions of laying hens being slaughtered due to “bird flu”, so prices have gone insane. For comparison, I got two 18’s on sale at $5.99 each. A flat of thirty was just over $10, so I was paying less per egg by buying the two cartons instead of my usual flat. At the current exchange rate, Cdn$5.99 is US$4.21 for 18 eggs. I believe the regular price was $7.99 (the sale sticker covered the regular price, so I’m going by memory), which is US$5.62, as of today.

That done, I got some gas ($1.569/L) before heading home.

After the truck was unloaded, since I was dressed for the outdoors anyhow, I went ahead and gave the outside cats their evening feeding a bit early. They did still have some food, but their water bowls were almost empty! The isolation shelter had no food or water left at all. After giving them their food and water in there, I counted 8 cats crowded into the upper level – and that was after a few had run out earlier!

I swear, The Grink has not left the isolation shelter at all, since the ramp door was opened.

Most of the cats were absolutely everywhere. They are so loving the warmer weather!

This is Stinky, wanting to reach out to my phone, and Magda. I got to cuddle Magda before Stinky forced his way in!

Judgement is down at the bottom, judging us all!

I need to remember. Magda has the white spikey triangle on her forehead and spots on her back. The other cat that has a white spikey triangle on HIS forehead does not have those spots on his back. I keep getting those two mixed up.

Anyhow.

After everything was done, I made sure to check on the septic pump again. I primed the filter and turned it on again. The water level dropped, just a bit, but still no inflow. So I primed it again, then took some video to send to my brother when I started it up again. This time, though, I could hear an extra sort of grinding noise, so I didn’t run the pump for long.

My brother is at work, but my SIL let me know that he’d seen my messages, but just couldn’t respond yet.

While I was doing all that, my daughter started heating up the pizzas for our supper. The instructions said to bake them right on the oven rack, which sounds like a recipe for disaster. Instead, she made sure to use parchment paper so as not to dirty the baking trays, which could then be used to transfer the pizzas to dinner plates to keep them clean, too. Of course, a large each is too much for one meal, so the parchment paper could be used to transfer what was left back onto a baking sheet to go back into the oven for later.

The less dishes we dirty, the less we need to wash in the basin so we can dump the water outside, instead of down the drain.

Oh, my goodness! My husband just sent me a photo I have to share!

Syndol was all over the bathroom window, wanting in!

He is probably the most socialized of all the yard cats and loves attention. He’s such a stunner, too!

Unfortunately, he would not be considered adoptable, as he has respiratory issues. It doesn’t slow him down in any way, but when rescues bring cats to the vets for treatment before adoption, they are typically told to have the cats put down, instead. It’s hard enough to adopt out “perfect” cats. Harder still, to adopt “imperfect” cats. The Cat Lady tried a few times, with people saying they were fully aware of the health issues and that they were ready and able to accommodate them, only for them to end up returning the cats to the rescue because their vets told them to put the cats down. At least three of the cats from our place got adopted out multiple times and returned before the Cat Lady and her family simply took them in themselves, permanently. They have several others that have even more severe health issues.

Anyhow.

So this is where we are at now. We have good news with the tire, and got a few things done during this much, much warmer day.

We shall see what my brother has to say about the septic pump and what he thinks is going on, there. Aside from checking on the pump, I’ve also been checking the floor drain. We are only using the water to wash our hands in the bathroom, which should have almost no affect on the level in the septic tank, but it things to go crazy somewhere, we would see back flow into that floor drain before we see it anywhere else. There has been moisture in there since the last time I used the hose to clear the pipe to the tank, and I’m starting to see roots growing in it! I’ll have to clear it again, soon – but not until after we solve the problem with the pump and can drain the tank again!

Have I mentioned how tired I am with the plumbing in this place?

Just a few times by now, I’m sure. 😉😉

The Re-Farmer

Here we go again… again???

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Oh, for crying out loud.

Our septic pump isn’t draining again.

We’ve been fighting with this all winter, finally getting the pump fixed, with a surprise find, and the diverter added in January while the ejector was still frozen.

Since we got the ejector thawed and the diverter was no longer being used, I’ve been checking the pump pretty regularly. Not obsessively, like I did for the first while, but still frequently.

One of the things I noticed, and even managed to time, is that the pump takes longer to drain the tank than it used to. Talking to my brother, I was thinking there might be more gunk stuck in the back valve. My brother suggested there could also be gunk partially blocking the venturi valve at the bottom of the ejector. Not something we could check until spring. The back valve on the pump would also be checked. We really want to avoid opening things up if we can, as that risks breaking things, and then we’d really be hooped. So, I just monitor.

I noticed that the water level in the filter started to drop, from filling the cannister entirely, to stayed at the level of the inflow opening. It wasn’t running dry, though, and seemed to stay steady, so I would sometimes top up the cannister after the pump was done, adding a bit of dish detergent to break up any grease that might be coating the pipes to from the cannister to the pipe and maybe clearing away anything in or around the back valve.

I hadn’t done that in a while, as the water level was staying the same and things were working.

When I heard the pump running last night, I decided to check it. Things seemed to be flowing as usual, but it was getting hard to see through the lid of the filter. It was starting to get cloudy from grease and grime.

So when the pump stopped, I opened the filter to wash the inside of the lid. I gave a squirt of detergent into the cannister, then scrubbed the lid at the old laundry sink next to the pump.

Normally, I would have then topped up the filter cannister with water, then put the cover back on.

This time, however, I found the water level in the cannister had actually gone UP – and was still going up, and began to overflow!

I popped the lid on and tightened the ring, and the water level stopped rising.

There are two openings in the filter cannister. Inflow and outflow. With the back valve, water only gets in through the inflow. But the pump was off. When the filter first gets opened, there is a gurgle as water in the cannister drains into the inflow pump, because, gravity. There should never be inflow when the pump is not running, because that would be water running uphill, so to speak.

The other alternative is the water was coming from the bottom. If the back valve was not properly closed, because something is caught in it again, liquid in the pipe to the ejector (and there is always some liquid in there) could flow back into the pump and through the back valve, into the cannister. Again. Gravity. The outflow pipe from the pump itself to the ejector is vertical for a few feet, then runs horizontally along the wall, out the basement and to the ejector.

Once things were closed up, all we could do was wait until the next time the tank was full enough to trigger the pump.

Which was this morning, while my daughter was in the shower.

I heard the pump turn on and it ran for a while before I was able to head down.

Which is when I saw there was NO water flow.

The cannister water level had dropped to the level of the inflow opening, but there was no outflow. Suds in the water showed me that the pump had not gone off during the night, while I was asleep.

I stopped the pump, primed it, turned it on again.

There was an initial splash from the inflow pipe, but no outflow. All it did was make more suds.

I tried again.

Still no outflow.

So I turned off the pump and let my daughter – who was still in the shower – know what was happening.

I then got ready to check on the ejector, in case that was frozen again. It was early enough that the outside cat stuff wasn’t done, so I did that first, then headed towards the barn.

I hadn’t been checking the ejector recently, because of the dangerously cold temperatures we’ve been having. The ejector has heat tape around it, and is sheltered on three sides.

When I got to the ejector, I could see the splash zone in front of it was much smaller, but with the cold we’ve been having, that’s to be expected. The water simply froze faster.

The heat tape was warm, so that was still working, and the nozzle at the top was clear. No evidence that the ejector is frozen again.

While I was doing that, my daughter set up the honey pot in the bathroom again.

*sigh*

I took video of what was happening and sent to my brother. The first thing I would want to do is check that back valve, but we don’t have the tools to do it. Specifically, a heat gun to soften the pipe so it can be taken apart and put back together.

If worse comes to worse, we should be able to set the diverter back up again. It was never put away, with the end just set aside. I didn’t want to have a hole in the wall to close up in the winter, so the pipe is still running through it.

I hate to ask this of him, but I really hope my brother is able to come by tonight to work on this. He hasn’t seen the messages I’ve sent to him yet, though.

Meanwhile, this afternoon, I’m going into town to get that tire on the truck checked. I made sure to check it this morning, after going to the ejector, and it seems to be holding air fine. When I found it low, yesterday, the truck had not been used for several days since the tire got fixed.

Since I’m going to be in town, anyhow, I’ll bring our water jugs to refill at the grocery store after the tire is checked and fixed.

Tomorrow, my daughter and I have our double medical appointment. We will be leaving early, as our first stop will be at the other medical clinic, where I will pick up my medical files to transfer to my new doctor, and get the bloodwork requisition for my mother. I will make sure to check the date of her last blood tests, as they are supposed to be a month apart. I’ll be taking her in to get that done in either late February or early March. Probably early March. Then, the day after tomorrow, I’m doing my mother’s grocery shopping. Next week, we start our stock up shopping trips to the city, and in the middle of that, my daughter has some medical scans that are being done in the town to the north of us. We’ve never been to their hospital/health care centre before.

So getting that tire checked today is pretty important!

Losing our septic again, on top of this, is just s*** icing on a s*** cake.

I am so tired of the plumbing in this place. I understand why we have the system we do, but I really wish was had a gravity septic system, not an ejector system. The less technology there is, the less there is to break down – and I say this as someone who loves my technology!

So.

Tired.

The Re-Farmer

How things are going

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Today is working out to be a rather pleasant day, overall. We’ve got bright sunshine and – as I’m writing this – there doesn’t seem to be much wind.

Unlike this morning!

I got the morning rounds done which, today, included shoveling out the space we back the truck into to load it up for the dump.

We got a fair bit of snow last night, though it was very light and fluffy and easy to shovel – and clear off the solar panels for the kibble and water shelter lights! We’re going to need to break little Spewie out to clear the driveway, but not today. We’ll be getting winds off and on today, while tomorrow is supposed to be much more pleasant. We’re supposed to reach a high of -11C/12F this afternoon, but the -16C/3F low of the day is supposed to happen around 7pm this evening, and then it’s supposed to keep warming up overnight until a high of -4C/25F tomorrow, and a high of 0C/32F on Monday!

I am so looking forward to the warmer temperatures!

Along with some shoveling to make room for the truck by the house, I also checked the ejector. The septic pump didn’t turn on during the night, but by the time I heard it running this morning, it was off before I got into the basement to check it. With my theory that gunk from inside the short lengths of pipe between the filter cannister and the back valve got loose and is now stuck in the back vale, I tried an experiment last night. I’d picked up some Dawn Platinum dish detergent to keep in the basement, for when I put in a clean filter basket and need to wash the spare. When I topped up the filter last night, I squirted in some detergent, first, then topped up the water before closing it up. I figured, with the filter draining like it does, it’ll take the detergent with it, and that would help clean out the pipe lengths and back valve the next time the pump turned on.

When I checked the ejector, I could see that water had splashed out for quite some distance, since the area was no longer covered in snow. Beyond how far the water is ejected, it flows down the metal sheet that diverts the flow towards the low area, and that section is completely covered in snow with a water tunnel under it. The snow and ice gives a good indication of how well the ejector is working.

Once I finished my rounds, I backed the truck up to the house and started loading it with garbage while my daughter checked the house and changed whatever garbage cans looked like they needed it, before helping me get the rest of the garbage and recycling out of the old kitchen.

The good thing about the old kitchen not being heated and not having much insulation: the garbage freezes in the winter, and there is no smell! Very important, since we go to the dump more more infrequently in the winter.

Once the truck was loaded (and clear of cats!), I headed out to the dump. The highway was covered in packed snow, with blowing snow buffeting me, so I was definitely taking my time for the drive! Another wintertime bonus: the area in front of the pit is covered in packed snow, so I’m less concerned about driving over something sharp enough to puncture a tire. 🫤

When I got back, my daughter had a couple of bags for the burn pile waiting outside the door, so I added those to the pile. With the warmer weather coming up, we should be able to finally burn that pile of mostly diseased branches, and do the burnable garbage, too. Our burn barrel has finally fallen apart, and the burn ring is full of ashes, so we can’t use either until we can clean those out in the spring or summer.

Not long after I was back, I got a phone call about my brother to talk about the septic pump. After talking about various possible causes throughout the system, we basically came down to the same conclusion: something is stuck in the back valve again, and the only way that could have happened is if there was something in the pipe between the filter cannister and the back valve that came loose. Especially since it was working so well at first. My brother had checked the back valve thoroughly, and it was in excellent condition. As for the pipe that attaches to it, it’s an elbow that is directly attached to the back valve, and he knew that elbow was clear. There’s about 6 inches of pipe between elbows, then another 8 inches or so from that pipe to the filter cannister’s outflow. Not a lot of distance for gunk to build up, but if that rag managed to take however many years it did, to work its way through that little bit of pipe and get stuck in the valve, it’s hard to say what else could have gotten stuck in there that we couldn’t see in between those elbows.

I told my brother what I’d done with the detergent, and he agreed that this might help. The alternative is to take it all apart again, and he wants to avoid that. The more things get taken apart, the more likely something will break. We’re keeping an eye on it, it’s still working, even if it does need to have the filter primed to get it going sometimes. My daughter was in the shower while were were talking, so I went to the basement to see if the pump would turn on, but it didn’t. The tank had been emptied too recently for one shower to trigger the pill switch again. As we were talking, though, I noticed something about the level of the water in the filter.

It was pretty much exactly level with the top of the pump, which is where the back valve is. The back valve is pretty much level with the inflow opening in the filter cannister – at least it is, now that I have something under the cannister to support its weight – and the water level almost completely covers it. So it looks like the water level is equalizing with the height of the valve.

I do wish I’d known more about the pump before all this started. Particularly about the back valve and where it was. Chances are, I would have made the connection with the back valve having problems, much earlier – and possibly gotten it fixed before the ejector froze solid!

Ah, well. Live and learn!

After I got off the phone with my brother, and my daughter was done her shower, I went back down to tend to the filter. I got my daughter to go with me so I could update her and show her what I was doing with the detergent, and what we hoped it would accomplish.

If the detergent doesn’t seem to be helping, I might want to just add some of the Free Flow powder to the filter before topping it up with warm water, instead of cold. While we still use the Free Flow enzymes and bacteria down the drains regularly, those are great for the plumbing and the septic tank, but doesn’t do much for that little section of pipe between the filter and the pump.

All of this stuff, we are extra careful to be sure it won’t damage the pipes or mess with our septic system. That’s something we just never had to think really about when living in the city!

So that is where were at with the septic issues. Now that we finally got the dump run done, we don’t need to go anywhere for some time. With the weather warming up, that means we can catch up with things in an around the house again!

I am just itching to be able to work outside again!

The Re-Farmer

A much more effective shop, plus updates

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Yesterday, while in a much larger town, I did a bit of grocery stopping. Just a few things to tide us over until we do our first big stock up shop in the city next week. The grocery store I went to has a really good inventory, and I would have loved to get more, but everything was too expensive.

What I forgot to do was bring our water jugs for refilling, so I needed to do that today. Being a much warmer day, I called my mother to see if she needed any errands done, or if she were up to going to the bank.

Thanks go her Meals on Wheels three times a week, her groceries stretch quite a lot further, so all she needed was milk. The only other thing she wanted were some croissants to go with her tea. She discovered croissants only recently and just loves them, and sometimes the grocery store in her town has some excellent prices on them.

So I decided I would get my water refills at her local grocery store, then maybe pick up the sandwich meats they have that are prices better than I’ve seen anywhere else, including the city, on top of my mother’s two items. She was getting her Meals on Wheels today, so I was going to pick up my own lunch of fried chicken at the gas station before going to her place.

Once at the grocery store, I had time to spare before I knew the gas station’s fried chicken would be ready, so I took my time and looked around.

What a difference from yesterday! This grocery store not only had better regular prices, but there were sale prices that were just awesome. Where, yesterday, I didn’t get the extras I would have wanted to, today I got extras I never expected to pick up!

I didn’t get a chance to get a photo before everything was packed up, so here’s just a picture of the reciept.

From the top, the first item is a jar of sliced pickles for sandwiches. The Dawn Ultra is for our basement, to clean the septic pump’s filter basket.

The “bakery reduced” is three bags of croissants for my mother, that cost only $1.75 each. This is even better than Superstore in the city, where they have clamshells of croissants available for $5, which is a great price, but far fewer croissants for the price compared to the tree bags I got. The 2L of milk was hers, too.

The boneless pork was one of the amazing sale prices; you can see on the receipt that the sale price discounted over $17 – more than half price for a very good sized roast! It was the thing with the fresh chicken legs and thighs. I ended up getting two packages of those. If I’d had the budget for it, I would have gotten more!

I got around 500 grams each of the sliced deli meats; the maple ham was a touch under, while the two chicken breasts were a touch over. That is their regular price, which is about $2/100g lower than most places.

The instant pudding was a spur of the moment thing. Four boxes for $5 is a really excellent price, as you can see by the amount discounted. While I just got a flat of 30 eggs yesterday, when I saw that the 18’s of house brand eggs were priced lower than a dozen, I just had to grab one. We can never have too many eggs! The rye breads are regular price; the same brand and price that we get at Walmart.

The water refills were the one thing that is more expensive, both the new caps and the water itself.

So of all this, $9.44 was for my mother. Which means that, of the $106.60 total, after taxes, we paid only $97.16 for our own stuff.

Which was a heck of a lot more than what we paid almost $130 for, yesterday! Particularly since I ended up getting so much meat on this trip!

After I finished the shopping, making sure to bag my mother’s stuff separately, I had time to spare before I would go to the gas station to pick up some fried chicken and wedges for lunch, so I went to a small department store to see what they had. I remembered there were a couple of things my mother wanted from there. One was a candle, for when she says her prayers. The other were slipper socks of some kind. Her feet get cold at night, so she wanted something she could sleep with. I actually found both, though I’m not sure if the slipper socks will work for her. They are supposed to be one size fits all, but my mother has massive bunions, and that might be a problem. We shall see.

I still had extra time, so I parked at the gas station and messaged with my brother for a bit. When I did my morning rounds, I checked the ejector, as he asked, but the pump hadn’t gone off during the night, so there was just fresh snow in front of it. I did feel the heat tape and it was warm, so that’s still working. Before I left home, I made sure to top up the filter on the septic pump and asked my family to keep an ear out for it, as it would probably go off while someone was taking a shower.

After updating my brother on things, I went inside, only to find all the chafing dishes were completely empty. Not even the potato wedges or deep fried perogies and pizza pops that get cooked first were there.

It turns out their frier was on the fritz. The food was being cooked, but it would be a while before anything would be ready.

Thankfully, they had a bank machine, so I took some cash out and went to the Chinese restaurant next to my mother. They are cash only. It’s been a few months since I’ve gotten anything there, so I was far from unhappy with having to change plans.

From there, I finally went to my mother’s. Today was warm enough that I didn’t need to worry about my groceries and the water jugs freezing in the truck cab.

Since I was able to get what my mother needed along with my own stuff, after we had lunch, I did other errands for her. It was her day to do laundry, so I changed her bedding for her, which was enough to make two loads for her. Once those were started, I did some light housework for her, and all those little things that she now finds difficult to do. The one unusual thing was trying to figure out why her TV wasn’t working After trying various things, it just kept reverting to a message saying to check the network connections. I checked everything I could think of before I finally took a picture of the message on the screen and sent it to my brother; he bought her this TV and did all the setting up, so he knows it a lot better than I do. A quick message back from him, and I found the setting that my mother somehow accidentally turned off. She has a habit of button mashing her remote control when things don’t work the way she expects, but when things go wrong, she has no idea what she did that caused it!

All in all, we were able to have a pretty good visit today, which is really unusual for the length of time that I was there. I really appreciate days like today. No personal attacks. No attacks on my family. Only mild attempts to attack my brother that I could easily address. No racist rants or bizarrely conflated topics she likes to rage about, even though she has no idea that she’s talking about completely different things. She still can’t figure out why she’s getting fundraising mail from a political party she is no longer a member of. I’ve told her, she’s on a mailing list and would need to ask to be removed. She things that “the government” (meaning, the federal government) is spending all this money to mail things out using taxpayer dollars. I’ve tried to explain to her that party mail is paid for by party members and party donations. They cannot use federal funds for stuff like this. I can tell she simply does not understand what I’m trying to explain.

One thing she did bring up is that she is noticing her own cognitive decline. She’s still convinced that she is dying, and told me she’s feeling all sort of pains, but it’s different now. How is it different? All she could do was vaguely gesture at her chest and stomach. She just doesn’t have the vocabulary, or understanding of anatomy, to explain what she is feeling and where. Aside from that, though, she’s finding it harder to remember words she uses regularly.

She’s still doing pretty darn good for being 93 years old! She does acknowledge that and is grateful for it. But she does need to be in assisted living of some kind!

At least she does live in town, and has home care coming in three times a day for medical assist with her prescriptions. The help she needs, though, home care out here cannot provide, nor can my siblings and I.

So we do the best we can. In the end, my mother really is doing amazingly well to still be living independently! I would not be at all surprised if she outlives us all. 😄

Anyhow.

Once done at my mothers, I got home while it was still light out (I am SO loving the longer days!). After the truck was unloaded, I made sure to check the ejector. The pump had gone off while my daughter was showering, and I could see by the melted splash area that the ejector still has a decent amount of pressure behind it.

On checking the pump, I saw the water level in the filter was getting low, so I topped it up again. After putting the lid back on, I could see air bubbling in from the intake opening as it started to drain. It has to be the back valve again. I took some video of the bubbling and updated my brother about it. He’s not saying much but, knowing him, he’ll probably find a way to come out this weekend to look at it again.

Tomorrow, though, we have to do a much needed trip to the dump, since we didn’t do it during our recent deep freeze. The dump is open longer hours on Saturdays, and I hope to get that done as early as possible. We’re supposed to be colder tomorrow, but nothing extreme. For the next while, it’s going to feel like spring!

I’m quite looking forward to it.

The Re-Farmer

Not quite done yet

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*sigh*

It started again.

After my brother discovered the rag stuck in the back valve on the septic pump, he made sure to give the valve a once over. It was in good working condition – once it was no longer filled with cloth! – so everything was put back together as it was, instead of being replaced with the not-quite-what-he-wanted new parts and pieces he’d found, after much running around in the city.

Once it was all together, the pump was working great again. It now runs so quietly, I can barely hear it when I’m sitting at my computer, which is pretty much directly above it. The filter, now that the pump was working right, actually filled more than we can fill it when we prime it, with water completely filling the dome shaped cover.

With all the troubles we’ve been having, I’ve been paranoid about it, and frequently go down to check when I hear the pump running.

Which is why I was there to notice that something had changed.

The water level in the filter was dropping, ever so slowly.

Each time the pump ran, instead of filling completely, there was space in the dome, and when it stopped, the level would be a little bit lower than before.

At one point, while watching it until the pump stopped, I saw it was low enough that I decided to prime the filter again. Once I filled the filter with water and closed it up again, I saw air bubbles coming in from the inflow opening and watched the level go down. !!! I filled it again and saw the bubbles again, but the water level stayed high enough to completely cover the inflow opening.

I told my brother about it, thinking maybe we need a new O ring after all, though it did seem well sealed when I opened it to prime the filter. As we messaged each other back and forth, he said that with the filter, there’s no way another rag or large object could be blocking the back valve again. He suggested I see how it’s flowing out of the ejector and compare it to the video he’d taken when we first got it going again. The problem with that is, even though the pump takes longer to empty the tank now that it’s pumping the fluid all the way out to the ejector, in the time it would take me to bundle up and walk over there, the pump would be done emptying the tank. The alternative would be for me to play with the bypass wires on the switch and have someone turn it on manually, after I’ve already gone out to the pump, and I really don’t want to do that!

Today, after we finished our running around, I was at my computer when I heard the pump start running while my husband was in the shower.

Which is when I heard that too familiar vibrating sort of noise.

I went down stairs to check. In the filter, I could see that it was mostly drained. There was inflow, but it wasn’t enough to fill even the bottom half of the filter while the pump was running.

I stopped the pump, primed the filter, then turned the pump on again.

The filter immediately drained, but there was no inflow anymore.

!!!

Priming process repeated. Pump turned on again.

This time, while it did drain quickly again, there was enough inflow that the water level reached high enough to cover the inflow opening, but that was about it. It never completely filled. I kept watching until it stopped, and even took some video to send to my brother.

While my brother is right that there is no way something large could get through the filter and block the back valve again, something occurred to me.

When we discovered the rag stuck in the back valve and my brother cleaned that out, neither of us thought to check the pipe from the filter to the valve. There’s a short length from the filter, which was still attached to the filter, then a short pipe with an elbow at each end that joined that filter outflow pipe to the back valve. That section with the two elbows was what my brother was originally going to replace with a new brass back valve, removing the one in the pump completely. What he hadn’t been able to find was the part he wanted that would attach to the pump where the original back valve is. The closest he could find was a steel piece, which would eventually corrode, but absolutely no one had the threaded piece he needed in plastic. So he was quite happy to be able to put the original parts back on again, which meant he could also return the parts and pieces he’d bought but never used.

So while it’s possible there might be something going on at the ejector, I think it’s the back valve again. I think it’s more likely that some sort of crud inside the pipe came loose, now that the water was flowing full power again, and instead of being washed away, got stuck in the valve.

Now, in theory, I could take that section off myself and check it. The problem is, I really don’t have the right tools for the job – my brother had to use his heat gun to warm up the plastic so he could get it apart, then put it back together again, for starters.

At this point, all we can really do it keep monitoring it. If it really is just a piece of crud that came lose and got stuck in the valve, it might just eventually get washed away.

Whatever the cause is, it’s very frustrating. It was working so well, then suddenly this is happening again!

At least, with the heat tape on the ejector, we know that shouldn’t freeze up again! The pump running with low flow again could potentially cause that to happen.

*sigh*

I was really hoping we were finally done with the septic system problems!

The Re-Farmer

A huge step forward, a small step back

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Have I mentioned my brother is awesome?

At -27C/-17F, with a wind chill of -38C/-36F, my brother spent hours, here – most of it outdoors – getting things done.

The first thing was the no-longer frozen ejector.

When he arrived, he headed to the barn to get some stuff and I went out to join him. Along the way, I looked towards the ejector and got quite a surprise.

The tarp was gone, the sawhorse over the ejector was half knocked over, held in place only by the extension cord for the heat tape (safely secured), and the blue jugs from the liquid ice melter scattered in the snow nearby.

I don’t think my brother ever found the tarp. That part isn’t a surprise, considering the winds we had yesterday!

When we got to the basement, things there went quickly. The bypass wires on the switch was hooked up so that we could turn it on and off manually, rather than rely on the pill switch in the tank. The only difficult part was moving the emergency diverter off the pump without making too much of a mess. We knew there would be fluid in the pipe and I had a bucket ready, but there was just no way to get the diverter off and moved over the bucket without spilling at least some all over.

After the pipe to the ejector was put back, my brother and I fussed with our phones for a bit, so that we could communicate while he headed out to the ejector, then let me know to turn the pump on. We were able to make a video call, so when the time came, he had his phone set up so I could see the ejector.

The water flowing out of there was amazing! I’ve never seen it pushed out that far before (if I did when I was a child, I have no memory of it).

There was one odd thing about it, though. Instead of being pushed out in a steady stream, the bottom of the stream sprayed downwards, getting the stack pipe wet. My brother also saw water coming up from under the cap, which means the stack pipe was full, when it should have been drained by the venturi valve once water started to flow.

In the end, my brother found a piece of pipe he cut to create a little extender on the elbow piece.

He then dug around the barn and found bits and pieces to build a wind shelter around the ejector.

There’s a 1″ thick piece of rebar he hammered into the frozen ground to secure it, so the wind shouldn’t blow it away.

That rotten old sawhorse my brother dug out of the snow has sure come in handy!

All of this took at least a couple of hours, but we now have a working ejector again! No more emergency bypass draining the tank into the back yard!

The bypass is still there, though. I told my brother to leave it. I’ll take it out, put everything away and seal that opening up again, in the spring.

Then, before he left, my brother took care of a couple of other things, as well as going into their stored items.

Then he brought over one of his taller ladders.

Yup. He climbed up onto the roof to check the vent. The one warm day my daughters could have done it, one of them was in the city with me. The next day was the storm.

After clearing the area of snow, my brother ended up bringing a chimney sweep that’s stored in the barn to see if it was blocked. The non-sweep side could fit into the vent – and yes, it was quite blocked! I had a jug of hot water that he poured in, and the one jug was enough to clear it.

Meanwhile, I’d filled a sink with hot water to drain, so we could check if all was well.

All was well in the vent.

Not in the drain pipes!

The sink started to drain fine at first, and then it just sort of stopped. My daughter stayed in the kitchen to monitor while I went to the laundry drain.

Just in time to see the filthiest water coming out of there we’ve ever seen!

My daughter stopped the sink from draining. Thankfully, there was already a towel under the laundry drain, just in case, but it still took a while for the water to stop flowing. I was just heading out the door to tell my brother what happened when I heard something give, then gurgling as the water finally drained into the main pipe.

My brother thinks that the main problem is ice stuck in the pipe and suggested running hot water for a while. I suggested that clearing the vent knocked more gunk loose, too.

Thanks to the plumber installing the rubber connector in the pipe in the root cellar, this is something we can do ourselves. My brother had a few more things he wanted to do, plus take one last check on the pump (I had already taken care of the bypass and it was back to a pill switch trigger, instead of a manual trigger) before heading home. He told me that, as he was driving out here, he was seeing a vehicle in the ditch almost every mile of the way!

So we have had a major step forward, in that our septic system is up and running properly now – in fact, better than when we first moved here, thanks to getting that rag out of the back valve!

We had another step forward with my brother getting the ice out of the vent.

There’s just one step back, as our drain seems to be clogged again. We can use the kitchen sink, but it doesn’t take long before we can hear water backing up into the laundry drain.

That’s a job for this evening.

If all goes well, by the end of the day, we’ll be able to hook the washing machine discharge pipe into the drain again, and do laundry without running a hose out the door.

Time to snag a daughter and get to work!

The Re-Farmer

Can we get a break, please?

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I am so over the plumbing in this place.

Not that we have any choice but to just run with the hits as they come.

With the main drain running from the kitchen to almost all the way to the septic cleared, we could finally do laundry without running a hose out the door to drain it. We did laundry all day before the drain was cleared, though, so it wasn’t until today that any of us needed to do laundry.

One of the things I wanted to do was run the tub clean setting, first, but we had a few extra grungy things in the washing machine, so that tiny load got done first. This new machine automatically adjusts the amount of water to the load, too, which is bonus.

The girls set the hose up before starting the load, but they can’t hear the machine from their “apartment” upstairs, so my husband and I were keeping an ear out. We didn’t hear anything unusual, but when I came out to check on things, I found water on the floor. It wasn’t flooding, as it has in the past. Enough that a few towels on the floor took care of it. I checked the drain pipe. It felt dry and I didn’t see wet underneath. The water and drain pipes are all framed with 2x4s, with cross pieces to keep things secure, and the lower one looked dry, too.

So we figured the problem was the discharge hose. It had been cat damaged in the past, and was taped up, but we figured it sprang a leak somewhere. My daughters taped it up as much as they could while I went hunting, ended up calling LG and ordering one in. It will be shipped by mail.

After taping up the discharge hose, the girls started the tub clean setting. After it ran for a while, I went out to check…

I immediately heard water splashing.

The drain pipe was overflowing around the discharge hose!

So I quickly paused the machine and threw a towel under to soak up some of the water – it’s a tight space and we can’t do much else without physically moving both the washer and dryer. The machine will automatically drain the tub when it’s paused or stopped, after a certain length of time, though – a protective feature so the weight of water doesn’t damage it – so we had to work fast. My older daughter came down to help while I started attaching the sump pump hose we use to drain the water out the storm door window. I got the hoses together, then my daughter started taping it while I started pushing the other end out the window on the door as fast as I could.

The water started draining while my daughter was still taping.

I dashed outside to straighten the hose out. With the tub clean setting, it was straight hot water. The water flowing through the hose melted a channel in the snow under it as it drained.

I didn’t fuss with it too much, though, and went back in to help my daughter finish securing the hoses together, then setting the rest up so there weren’t any lower hanging spots for water to collect.

Then we could restart the machine to finish the tub clean. I just checked on it again. The outside cats are VERY curious about the far end of the hose outside!

So while some water is going through the laundry drain pipe, it still must have a clog somewhere. I could even hear it trying to back up to the kitchen sink. The plumber worked on the pipe right near where the laundry drain reached the main drain pipe, so I know there is no clog near there. With the kitchen sinks, everything has been flowing fine.

But we still can’t drain the washing machine.

Wherever the clog is, the washing machine drains faster than the water can get past the clog.

Which has to be either in the P trap, which was replaced a couple of years ago, or in the short length of pipe from the P trap to the main drain pipe. I don’t think it’s the P trap that’s clogged, but I really don’t think it would be in the short length of pipe to the main drain pipe. Mostly because I could hear water backing up to the kitchen sink, so obviously, water it making it through to the main drain.

So why is it not only backing up and gurgling in the kitchen sink, but also overflowing the laundry drain? That’s a LOT of water to get backed up!

We’ve been diligent about following the maintenance instructions the plumber gave us, too. The pipes should be getting clearer, not clogging up.

I just don’t get it.

Meanwhile, we’re back to doing laundry with a hose out the door.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

We were wrong

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We were all wrong.

We also had no way of knowing how or why we were wrong!

My brother, saint that he is, came out today to work on both the frozen ejector and the septic pump problem.

My SIL dropped him off, as he would be taking their car that they loaned us, back. The first thing he did was head to the ejector – he was here for an hour before we even saw him! He set up a low power heater around the ejector and covered the whole thing with a tarp to hold what little heat there was.

When I came out to join him, I was surprised by how much is was snowing. There had been no snow at all when I did the morning rounds and opened the gate for them. We ended up having what felt like a light snow, though it was actually heavier than it seamed, it was so calm out, the whole time.

He had spent yesterday evening running around all over the city, looking for the parts and pieces he needed for the septic pump. With the water leaking out of the filter, he concluded that the back valve was leaking. The pictures he asked me to take and sent to him helped a lot, as he couldn’t quite remember the details on the pump.

Once he did as much as he could around the frozen ejector, I helped him bring in his tools and supplies into the basement.

He came well prepared. A habit he got into when he would come here to fix things for our late father, because all Dad’s tools were scattered all over, or “borrowed” by our vandal.

First, I need to explain what we were wrong about.

When we first started having issues, I was thinking the pump itself was the problem. I thought it was about 20 years old and, which all the plumbing issues we had and with it running dry for way too long at times, I was thinking it was wearing out. It was even starting to sound worse.

I was wrong.

My brother replaced the pump only about 10 years ago, got the best pump available at the time, and he had full confidence in it.

The company that installed the ejector also thought it was the pump, with not enough pressure going through the venturi valve, causing the ejector to freeze.

He was… partially right. There was low flow, so low pressure, but it wasn’t because of the pump.

Other thoughts from various people, including me:

– that there was an air leak somewhere in the pipes from the tank to the pump.
– the O ring was failing
– the pipe from the house to the ejector was starting to get filled with gunk
– gunk from inside the pipe to the ejector was breaking loose and clogging the venturi valve
– the ground around the venturi valve was too saturated (which may still have been a contributing factor)

While it sounds like we’re talking about two problems – the frozen ejector and the septic pump problems – once we set up the emergency diverter, we got more of a sense that the problem around the pump lead to the ejector freezing. Thawing the ejector is its own problem.

With the water draining out of the filter, my brother conclude that the back valve was broken and wanted to replace it.

He was half right.

He was going to replace a whole section of connectors and a bit of pipe, removing the original back valve completely, and installing a new one, in line.

I’ve actually uploaded a bunch of short videos, because photos could not do it justice. Here is the first one. Here, the section of pipe and elbow connectors has been removed, but not the back valve.

No, you will not see the brass filter in another video. We never used it.

Instead, we found this.

W. T. F.

We were just flown away. HOW did a piece of cloth that big get into there! How many years was it there?

That is a BIG chunk of fabric! The fact that the pump worked at all with that in there is amazing!

With that filter installed after we moved here, we know it had to have happened before then. I don’t know when the other filter was finally removed, because it never worked. My guess is the fabric got into the pipes somewhere in that time between filters.

The only way I can think of how that got into the system is either by getting flushed down the toilet somehow, or it fell into the tank at some point when the lid was open.

It could well have taken years to get sucked into the pipe and work its way through all the elbow connectors. There are three on either side of the filter, and even when there was just a straight pipe before this filter was installed, the elbows were still there.

Then, once it got through the pipe, it got forced through the valve, where it could go no further.

Upon removing the fabric, my brother looked over the valve, and it was undamaged.

So he just put everything back together as it was, with fresh Teflon tape on the threads.

One of the other things he did was set up the switch by-pass. Right now, we have a switch on the wall to turn the pump on and off manually – but the pump won’t run unless the pill switch in the tank is high enough to trigger it. He’d set up the wiring before, but they were tucked behind the switch plate. He set the wires to they were now outside (after I turned the breaker off, of course) and connected them, so that when the switch was turned on, the pump would run immediately.

Before starting work on the pump, he ran it to drain the tank. It had run not that long before, so there wasn’t much in there, but he wanted to make sure it was empty before he started taking off pipes and draining what water was inside the pump itself. He was going to need to test it again later, so we had to run water for quite a while, just so he could have something in there to test the pump with, once everything was back together.

It takes a long time to fill that tank.

Eventually, though, we got it to the point where he could turn the pump on and test it out.

At the very end, you can see a sudden change in the flow. That’s when the tank was empty and the pump had to be shut off immediately.

What a thing of beauty. Everything was flowing well – just like when it was installed!

Which makes me think that piece of fabric was stuck flat against the inside of a section of pipe somewhere between the filter and the pump, because that filter and pump were working great at the start, and for quite some time after.

We’ve had other problems with the system that, in retrospect, were probably caused by that piece of fabric moving down the pipes a bit further, then a bit further, then a bit further.

There was absolutely no way anyone could have known.

Oh! I just heard the septic pump turn on as I write this. I’d checked the filter earlier, and it was completely full, and I know it’s pumping fine and faster than it has in probably years!

The only down side is the vibrate-y noises from where the emergency diverter makes contact with things.

Wow. The pump just turned off. That took less than two minutes, easily!

What an excellent pump.

I am so happy to be wrong about that pump!

Once that was done, my brother disengaged the bypass, so the pump would only turn on when triggered by the pill switch. My brother wanted to test it again, but it would take a while I left a tap running in the old laundry sink, next to the pump, but I made sure the rest of the family knew to use water, flush toilets, take showers, to fill that tank enough to test it again.

Then, it was time to head outside and work on the ejector.

In the first photo, you can see the fluid level is quite high, because my brother had poured in about half a jug of liquid ice melter – calcium chloride. This won’t damage the plastic pipes, but there is a brass fitting at the bottom that could potentially get corroded, but that would likely take a long time. Once things are thawed out, we can hook the pipe back on and anything down there will get flushed away when the pump sends fluid through.

In the next photo, my brother is using the heat gun on the copper pipe to try and get the ice inside the venturi pipe – the discharge pipe – thawed more. It had been frozen to the top before. When we got there and my brother started this, it was down about 2 inches. By the time we stopped, it was down about 4 or 5 inches.

We spent quite a bit of time out there in the falling snow, using the heat gun and the copper pipe and the calcium chloride to get more of it melted down. There was no way it was going to be thawed out completely, though.

For that, we used the heat tape that came in the mail yesterday. That’s the blue you can see in the third image. The glass tape that game with it wouldn’t stick, buy my brother brought electric tape that he kept in a pocket inside his jacket to keep it warm, and that worked. We ended up using the heat tape box to hold the sheet of metal roof out of the way, as it rests right against the pipe. Being frozen to the ground and covered in snow and ice, we can’t move it away. My brother dug through his tools in the barn and found something to bend it back.

The cap and elbow were put back on the ejector, but only loosely. We want to be able to pop them off easily to check on how it’s melting.

My brother did some scrounging and dug an old, rotten saw horse out of the snow to put over the ejector. This would keep the tarp from having contact with the ejector itself. The last thing we want is for it to snap off the elbow or something in the wind.

Last of all, the tarp was wrapped around the whole thing – black side out to absorb warmth from the sun (whenever we get sun next) and tied off a bit. If we get high winds from the south, it might still get blown off, but it can’t be tied down too tightly, or I’ll have trouble checking on it.

All of this took quite some time, with a few trips to the barn or the garage, etc. to find things we needed. At one point, I needed to go into the house. As I was leaving, I caught a light whiff of septic, so I went around to check on the outflow pipe.

The septic pump must have just shut itself off by the time I got there. I could immediately see a whole lot more snow had been washed away. In some areas, the flow goes under the snow, creating gaps in the snow above in places. While there was no water coming out of the outflow pipe, I could see through one of the gaps, water that was flowing fast. The pump was definitely working well!

Before he left, my brother checked the pump in the basement one more time – the filter was full to the top and the filter basket was floating, just like it should be – then checked the outflow pipe. He was surprised by the direction the water was flowing, but I wasn’t. There’s a reason I have a retaining wall at that end of the old kitchen garden!

Now that this is fixed, and we’ve had the clogged drained fixed, we need to use our water. Especially in the kitchen and laundry. We still need to set the washing machine drain hose back into the pipe – no one has needed to do laundry yet – and I plan to do a machine clean cycle. That uses straight hot water. We’re also going to keep up the drain maintenance routine we’ve already started, plus what the plumber recommended we do with the kitchen sinks every few days. Last night, I even flushed out the access pipe to the septic tank in the old basement floor with the hose, to make sure that second bottleneck was still clear. Having the laundry draining into the septic again should actually help keep that clear, too.

By the time my brother left, he’d been here about four hours, with a brief stop for lunch, working on all this!

My brother is allergic to cats, so I had lunch with him in his car.

Meanwhile, he can return all the parts and pieces he never needed to use, and get his money back!

We’re still blown away by finding that piece of fabric stuck in the valve. So utterly unexpected.

The fact that nothing was damaged by it is pretty amazing, too.

So we were all wrong about what was going on, and that’s just fine! With some of the possible causes, this is one of the easiest fixes there could have been.

As for the frozen ejector, it’s hard to say how long it will take for the calcium chloride to work its way down to the bottom. Then my brother will need to come back and switch the pipes so we can test it out and, hopefully, be able to leave it.

We might not be using the emergency diverter all winter, after all!

Wouldn’t THAT be nice!

Also.

My brother is the best.

The Re-Farmer