septic pump

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…

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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

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

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

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

Moving forward

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First, the cuteness!

I would really like to be able to get that fluffy lady and get her spayed! She does sometimes let me pet her, but not very often of late.

This morning, I tried for a head count and got 29, which is the highest I’ve counted in a while. Not sure what to make of that, but cats will cat, I guess!

A brief update on our plumbing situation. Any time I hear a pump go off, I am checking the basement, even if it’s just the well pump. The septic pump makes a different sound now that the diverter is attached but, strangely, it sounds just like the fan in our bathroom!

There is still a leak somewhere, and I’ve had to top up the filter a few times. Sometimes, the filter cap will be tightly seals. Other times, it won’t be. There was one time I checked when I heard it go off, and the filter was low on water, but there was inflow happening. I waited and watched, and the inflow pressure increased as the water level in the filter increased faster than it drained out, and soon it was properly full and working right.

I updated my brother on all of this. He asked for some photos from different angles, and I figured he was planning to come out and see what he could do about it. Something he did eventually confirm, saying he was going to try something with the “back valve” on the pump. I assume there are valves, but I don’t know anything about what they are or where. I look forward to seeing what he does and learning more about it. Meanwhile, my SIL confirmed that she would be driving my brother out and drop him off, so he can take back their car that they loaned us.

My younger daughter and I needed to go into town to pick up our prescriptions today so, of course, we took advantage of the trip to run other errands.

This meant using the truck. I can’t be using my brother’s car, just because it’s there. I’d used the OBDII scanner last night and confirmed it was still the same sensor that was the issue, so there was really no excuse.

It ran just fine, but I really hate having the check engine light on, and the oil pressure gauge not working.

Our first stop in town was, of course, the pharmacy. My new painkiller prescription was filled yesterday, but my daughter’s was just put on file; when my prescription arrived, they called us about it, asking if I wanted it filled. They never called about my daughter’s prescriptions. They were going to need some time to fill it, so I left her to wait for it and did our other errands. The first was to return that security camera I’d picked up, so we could monitor the septic pump without running up and down the stairs all the time. We never did figure out why it wouldn’t connect to our WiFi.

The exchange was pretty straightforward and quick, so I had time to stop at a grocery store near the pharmacy. It’s not one we normally go to, but it was on the way. All I needed to pick up was butter, but on the way out I’d asked if my daughter had eaten anything, and she hadn’t. It was coming up on lunch time, and I knew she’d been up at around 3am and unable to get back to sleep. So I picked up something for her to eat as well.

That done, I went back to the pharmacy, where my daughter was still waiting. They didn’t have one of the meds as a generic in stock, so she got a name brand, instead. Another, they could only fill half of it. It didn’t take too much longer, though. My daughter used to work at this pharmacy, so she got to catch up a bit with former co-workers.

Since I was able to run our other errands while she waited, once everything was paid for, we were done in town.

This town, at least!

We were starting to run low on kibble, especially for the outside cats, so we made the trip to my mother’s town, next, and to the feed store.

The price on the 40 pound bags has gone up.

The lysine I’d ordered wasn’t in. It’s been quite a while since I requested it, so I was a bit surprised.

From there, we picked up some fuel and headed for home, with a quick side trip to the post office. I was giving one more day for the letter mail that got delayed by the postal strike. If it didn’t come today, I was going to assume it was lost and would have to make arrangements.

I was pretty happy to see that it had finally arrived – but also found a parcel slip. I was not expecting any parcels until next week!

The post office hadn’t reopened for the afternoon, yet, so I couldn’t pick it up. They’d reopen in only 20 minutes, though, so my daughter and I headed home and unloaded. She headed in to put things away, and I went back to the post office, just in time for it to reopen.

Look what came in early!

This is what my brother and I want to try on the ejector. We can’t use the 100′ extension cord my brother set up when he was going to try his heat gun, as it is for 2 prong plugs. We have two, but they are both in use right now. Once my brother retrieves his car, though, one will be freed up, as it’s currently what his block heater is plugged into. I don’t know that we’ll set that up tomorrow, though. If the source of the problem really is the over saturated soil under the ejector, thawing the stand pipe out isn’t going to do much good. It’ll just freeze again. And we certainly don’t want to be switching from the emergency diverter to the ejector on the pump, if only to have to switch it back again later.

We shall see what my brother thinks, when he gets here tomorrow.

Meanwhile, now that we no longer have a clogged drain from the kitchen sink, and the diverter is mostly working fine, we’ve been catching up on dishes and other cleaning jobs. We still haven’t needed to do laundry, though. I’m still on constant alert for the sound of the septic pump; I’m the only one that can hear it when it goes off, and only when I’m in my office/bedroom, which puts a limit on what I can get done.

I really hope whatever my brother has come up with, works!

I must say, though; it may be a pain in the butt to be constantly listening for and checking on that pump, things are a LOT more relaxed now that both the diverter is working, and that clogged drain is cleared!

Meanwhile, I’m hoping to get a much better night’s sleep tonight, with these new painkillers.

At least as much as the cats will allow… 😄😄

The Re-Farmer

It’s brrrr out there!

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Our 10th day of Christmas is working out to be a cold one!

As I write this, we are back down to -22C/-8F, with the same wind chill of -33C/-27F that I was walking in, earlier today.

It could be worse. We could be Regina! They are at -31C/-24F, before wind chill!

We are currently under ongoing extreme cold warnings but, thankfully, we will be warming up over the next few days, so it’s really just tonight that’s expected to be severe like this.

I am glad that the truck it plugged in, though! 😁

In other things, I believe I’ve found the cause of our septic pump problem. Potentially. I went down to the basement randomly to check the pump, and found water pooled under the filter. The filter itself was pretty full, though. I couldn’t find the actual source of the leak, but I believe it is under where the pipe from the tank screws into the filter housing.

I ended up messaging my brother about it, as he installed the filter after we moved here – and the pump itself, the last time that was done. I’d told him we were looking into replacing the pump, and could only find one at a specific hardware store. Turns out, the nearest location is the one he’d bought this pump at, and he bought the most powerful pump he could get. Which is interesting, because when I showed a picture of our pump to one of the staff to show what I was looking for, he took a closer look at the label and commented that it wasn’t very powerful. I don’t know how long ago it was replaced – probably closer to 20 years ago. The newer pumps would have improved quite a bit since then, I’m guessing!

As for the filter, after I described what was happening, he told me this had happened before. A different filter had been installed at the time. My late father had noticed problems with the septic pump and my brother could not find the source. He ended up hiring and excavator to check the pipes to the tank, and they never found the problem there, either, though they did find some things that were loose that shouldn’t have been! That was fixed, at least. The plumber ended up having to leave without finding the problem, because he’d been here for so long. In the end, my brother took out the filter (it had been installed by another family member) and just put pipe back – and it worked fine again!

So when he got a new filter after we moved here, he went and got the best filter he could find. It’s a Jacuzzi pool filter, and pretty solid.

Well, I guess even the best stuff will wear out eventually!

This is not something that can be repaired, though. The entire filter would need to be replaced. I don’t know where my brother got it from, other than “in the city”. I don’t even know if they still make the same style of filter anymore. I’ve done a quick search and the closest I could find to what we have is attached to a pool pump – and it’s the pump that’s being sold in the image, not the filter. It may not be available anymore.

Replacing a filter, at least, would be more affordable than replacing a pump. Plus, it’s something we could do ourselves.

If we can find one, and I sure as heck am not going to be driving around looking, in this cold.

My daughter and I have joint medical appointments on Wednesday, which is supposed to be warmer. The hardware store that carries the septic pumps has a location just a couple of blocks from the medical clinic. I might want to pop over after our appointment to see what they have.

For now, I just want to stay home and hybernate.

The Re-Farmer

Our 2024 Garden: potato harvest, and here we go again??

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Okay, first the pleasant stuff.

My brother and his wife are still on their way here. My brother had estimated the tractor could average 20km/h. Now that they’ve been on the road for a while, my SIL thinks it’s more like 12km/h

It’s going to be a while for them to get here, still!

Before I got the messages about this, I’d gone outside to open the gate and get things done out there, so I’d be there when they arrived. One of the first things I did was harvest potatoes at the chain link fence.

On the right, in the photo, are the last of the red thumb fingerling potatoes that I could find. There were some surprisingly large ones in there, for the type of potato! Especially considering we planted the little potatoes that were left from last year, out of the bin we’d been going into throughout the winter.

The potatoes on the left are the purple caribe. These are the ones that most of them did not come up at all. Just a few in the middle of the bed, and a couple at one end. I’ve left the couple at one end, and just harvested the ones in the middle.

There aren’t a lot but, under the circumstances, it’s actually better than I thought it would be. There are some decent sized potatoes in there! Unfortunately, I damaged some with the garden fork. The soil had become quite compacted, so I had to use it quite a bit. All that means is, we have to use the potatoes right away.

No hardship there!

After harvesting the potatoes, I set the bin in the sun for now. I was going to start weed trimming around the house, in preparation for lawn mowing soon. Next to the house is a row of lilacs with the cherry trees in the middle. The cherry trees keep trying to spread through their roots, so I decided to cut those away, first.

There turned out to be a lot more than I expected!

When I got the messages about the delay, a paused for a while and had some supper.

Which is a good thing, because I was inside to hear that the septic pump was running and not shutting off again.

This happened earlier today. The filter was empty and the pump was running dry, so I shut off the power switch, primed the filter, then went outside to check the tank. I used the hose to spray the float free, and when I turned the power back on to the pump, it did not turn on.

I was expecting the same thing this time, but when I opened the tank, I could see that it was full enough to trigger the float. The pump was running, because it needed to.

I went back to the pump and turned the power on. The pump started running, but nothing was happening in the filter. It didn’t even drain through the outflow at the base. The pump was running, but nothing was happening.

I opened up the access pipe in the floor and ran the hose through – it was pretty clogged in places – but I didn’t want to run too much water through there with the tank already so full and not being emptied. It made no difference, anyhow.

I’ve left it off and sent a message to my brother and SIL, letting them know about it. I hate to even bring it up, considering how hot and exhausted my brother is going to be by the time they get here. No AC in the tractor! I heard back from them while I was writing this post. They’ve arrived at a gas station in the town my mother lives in and have stopped for a break.

After the update, I went to check on the pump again, and found the filter reservoir had drained. It shouldn’t do that. I topped it up, and started seeing … gurgling? … from the outflow at the bottom.

It shouldn’t do that, either.

Turning the power on, the pump ran, but again, no flow. The tank is not draining.

This is not good.

Once I’ve posted this, I’m going to head out to the outflow pipe near the barn to see if anything has happened there. I think the renter’s cows have been rotated away again. I haven’t seen them in a while. Which means the electric fence should be off.

We have had so many problems with this septic system! Especially this year.

*sigh*

The Re-Farmer

What a day

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We’re at 27C/81F right now, with the humidex at 33C/91F It’s sunny, hot, humid, and there’s virtually no breeze at all.

A perfect day to be fighting with our septic system again, right?

*sigh*

I actually wasn’t feeling very good this morning. The girls took care of the usual outside stuff for me so I could go back to bed. They’d been up all night, of course, taking advantage of the cooler temperatures for my older daughter to work on her commissions, and do things like their laundry. We’re still running the hose out the storm door window, so at not to add more wear and tear to the septic system.

When I finally got up, I thought I was hearing a pump running, but we’ve got so many fans going, I wasn’t sure. I went down to check and, sure enough, the pump was running dry again.

I tried the usual things. Priming the filter and turning the pump’s switch on again, only for it to still start running, draining the filter and continuing to running dry. I even stuck the hose through the floor pipe, but there were no blockages. I checked the tank, and everything looked normal, there. The grey water side was pretty full, but not so full as to trigger the float yet.

So I grabbed a particularly strong hoe that we have. I actually remember using it as a child. At some point, the original handle must have broken, and the head was welded onto some steel pipe. That thing is practically indestructible. I also grabbed a flexible drain cleaner meant to be used in sinks, thinking it could be used on the outflow pipe.

I also made sure to be wearing my rubber boots!

I went through the barn’s back door to go around the outflow pipe from the far side. This gave me a chance to see the state of things on the downhill side.

I look forward to when the renter’s cows are here. The grass is chest high right now!

The outflow pipe has a sheet of metal roofing material under it, to guide the flow of water away and towards a sort of pond; it’s a low area that is dry most of the year, but hold water in the spring.

Before I could even get to it, I was using the hoe to cut away a forest of burdock. None gone to seed yet, thankfully. Just really tall and lush growth!

[sidetrack: after water was used again, I turned the pump back on. I had to prime the filter again, but the pump did finally start to actually draw water from the tank, then ran and shut itself off, as it’s supposed to. Yay!]

I eventually found where the sheet of metal was buried and started clearing that off of mud and crab grass – and even a bullrush! That cleared off the metal fairly easily, but I found that the entire sheet had been shifted at the end, likely from cows walking over it. I also found a spot where the metal had rusted away completely.

Once I got it clear of gunk and could move it, it was obvious it needed to be replaced. In between where the outflow is, and the barn, there is a lot of stuff, including leftover sheets of metal roofing. I started through the tall grass towards where they were and conveniently found a long sheet that the wind had blown closer. Even better, one end of it was curled, while the other was flat.

How perfect can it get?

While I pulled out the old sheet, it basically folded in on itself where it had a corroded chunk missing. I set the folded end to one side of the outflow pipe, partly to keep things from growing back beside it, and partly to make use the curled end of the new sheet didn’t end up flopping in that direction. With the way the water had been flowing, it was draining towards that side, and pooling by the collapsed log building behind it.

Once the new sheet was in place, I dug around in the grass and found some old branches that I lay on it, to weigh it down. I don’t want it to blow away, the next time we get high winds.

That done, I popped the cap open and pulled out the outflow pipe (it’s all one piece). It’s quite long, and the overhanding willow branches got in the way. I’ll have to go back with the loppers and cut them away.

At the bottom of the pipe is what my brother called a Venturi. I had to look it up, and I guess he meant venturi pipe? Anyhow, it has a section at the bottom that comes almost to a point. I went to clear it with the drain cleaning rod I brought – it has bristles at the end, like a bottle brush – but couldn’t get very far. It was clear, anyhow. So back it went, and I made sure I felt it pop into position at the bottom.

So at this end, at least, things should be working better. I’ll have to check it to make sure it’s directing the flow to where it should, properly, or if the metal sheet needs to be shifted or something. I even made sure to walk down the middle of it, to the flat end, to create a bit of a hollow. The roofing metal already has ridges to directed the flow of water, so it shouldn’t be an issue, for the amount of water that flows through at a time, but I’d rather take the extra precautions! The only real issue I can think of is that the renter’s cows will probably walk on it. There used to be a barbed wire fence around it, and the low area the water is supposed to drain into, but that collapsed long ago.

That done, I went back and tested the pump again, and it still kept just draining the filter and running dry. I finally primed the filter and just left the pump off.

Getting back into the house, however, was a challenge.

The sun room was blocked!

Driver was not only nursing her four, just inside the doorway, but Button was in there, too! Driver would have only four active nips, though, but Button was quite aggressive about getting access to one of them!

With the washing machine hose through the main entry, the storm door is locked from the inside, so the cats don’t accidentally open it and get out. The inner door at the the dining room has a security latch. We installed it because of our vandal, but we’ve since discovered that, as the house shifts, the inner and outer doors sometimes pop open on their own. The storm door, I can see, but the inner door, too? So those doors are locked and latched from the inside, all the time.

Well, I needed to hose off the hoe and drain cleaner wire, anyhow. By the time that was done, Driver had moved.

By this time, it was past noon and I hadn’t eaten yet, so after checking the pump and it still running, I just left it off. I knew it would soon need to actually empty the tank and, even if we didn’t use much water ourselves, the weeping tile under the new basement is constantly draining into there, so it wouldn’t be long before I’d need to turn it on again.

It was almost another hour before I finally settled down with some food! Since I’d slept in, I hadn’t had breakfast, and was so hungry, I was feeling sick. Especially out in that heat!

Since then, the pump has been turned back on and is working again. I’m glad we can see into the filter like that. I knew the tank should have been full enough to be emptied, so I was watching closely. After the pump drained the filter and started running dry again, I primed it and tried again. This time, I could just see water starting to flow into the filter, so I left it running. It was slow going, but it finally started to pull more water, and was at least not running dry. A little longer, and the flow of water increased, and I could see it splashing against the clear lid. I puttered around in the basement as it ran, and was happy to hear it turn itself off on its own, just like it should!

The basements, meanwhile, are still pretty wet. The old basement is pretty much wet all summer, but it’s the new basement that is the concern. It has weeping tile. It shouldn’t be so wet. I ended up moving one of the blower fans into the new basement, and set it up on a block near the middle of the basement, pointing downwards. The oscillating pedestal fan got moved closer into the wettest corner. Between the two of them, things should start drying off. It’s a shame I can only open one of the basement windows for air circulation. The other two are missing their screens.

So that’s what I’ve been fighting with all day – but I’ll leave you with more cuteness! I got this photo through the bathroom window. I didn’t want to disturb them!

Yes, they are both asleep. Button draped over that sponge (they love to play with that sponge, so I gave up trying to put it back on the shelf! 😄) is just the cutest thing, ever!

I’ve sent pictures of Button to the Cat Lady to share in her groups. We can’t bring him inside. Aside from already having too many cats indoors, as long as he stays close to the house, he’s got at least two, maybe three, mamas that are willing to nurse him, and he’s way too little to be weaned. Better a mama, outside, than a bottle, inside! But there might be someone out there willing to rescue an abandoned kitten, and willing to bottle feed him until he’s old enough to be fully weaned.

I was able to give the kittens some leftover turkey as a treat today, and made sure to give Button his own piece, away from the other cats and kittens. He does love his solid food, that’s for sure! Hopefully, he will grow big and strong and healthy.

Speaking of which, my daughter got a look at Shop Towel’s cheek while feeding the cats this morning. She says it looks like a hole! My guess is the original wound got infected and maybe abscessed? He is, however, eating normally and doesn’t seem to be bothered by it. It’s not bleeding or anything like that, and since it’s not being bothered by insects, it’s not leaking any fluids, either. It’s just… there.

What’s interesting is that he’s been really good with the kittens. Where other adult cats, both males and some of the more feral mothers, will bat at the kittens, or growl and hiss at them, he is just fine with them. I’ve seen him curled up and sleeping on the log pile by the old garden shed, with Broccoli and her two kittens curled up and sleeping on another log next to him. At night, the sun room kittens like to pile up together in different “rooms” of the cat cage, while a mama or two like to sleep on top of it. This morning, my daughter found Shop Towel curled up in one of the cat beds on the cage – with several kittens! So he’ll attack an adult cat, unprovoked, but is a cuddle bug with the babies. While I can appreciate it, it does seem quite strange!

Hmm. I was wondering if it would be worth it to try and get some stuff down outside. The temperature had dropped while I was working on this, but it’s gone right back up to what it was when I started! It’s not supposed to start cooling down until about 8pm, and it’s just past 3pm as I write this.

*sigh*

Well, it is what it is. We’ll just have to get used to it.

The Re-Farmer