Friday night, Terry and I were sitting down to dinner at approximately 5:30 pm. The winds were howling as they are wont to do during November when there was a loud POP! and a flash of light down the hill and our electricity went out.
I called the outage in to the offices at Tri-County Rural Electric Cooperative using their automated system and (my mistake!) told them I didn't need to be called back when power was restored. I figured it would be, at most, two hours or so. When Power wasn't back on at 7:30, Terry and I went to bed.
I woke up at 12:30 am to find power still had not come back on so I called Tri-Co again and this time spoke to a real person who told me they had 44 folks on the initial power outage and that they had all gotten their power back. I told her we had not and that there was no one else on our little spur except for some hunters from New Jersey who were not at their cabin this weekend. She asked if I had checked the main breaker because if it was on our end we might get a charge on our bill. I told her to send a crew to investigate and I would pay the charge if need be. Then I went to check the breaker which was NOT the problem.
The truck showed up around 1:00 am and two guys started to look over the line. First, they found a fuse box with its door open and they went about checking the line between there and the Jersey guys' cabin to see if a tree or branch lay on the wires. Around 1:30 am the lights came back on. Too late for me to go back to sleep.
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Saturday I was in the basement groggily working on a jigsaw puzzle and watching Rutgers football when I noticed the shallow water pump we have to move water from our 500 gallon cistern to all the faucets in the house just would not stop running. I checked it out and concluded there was something wrong with the pressure switch so I tried fiddling with it to no avail. (Turns out nothing I did would have done any good anyway and might have done even more harm.)
Deciding the switch was defective, I hauled Terry down to Lowes to get a replacement. (Misery loves company!)
I installed wired the new switch only to have it behave just like the old one. Rather than try to fiddle with this one, I told Terry to find a plumber. She went on line and found one guy who said they could n't get to us for TWO WEEKS! She must have sounded desperate because he then recommended she call another guy who specializes in well drilling and Gould's Water Pumps. A shallow water pump just like the one we have.
Terry called and this guy said he would be right over. He showed up around 7 pm with his wife and while he started trouble-shooting I asked if she was his helper and her reply was, "No. I'm his boss." Well, they worked for three hours before showing me what was wrong: Clay deposits in the pipe leading to the switch and in the main outlet (plenum?) were constricting water flow. The pressure switch wasn't getting enough ummph behind it to shut sown and the waster coming out of the pump wasn't getting to the faucets with the correct pressure. He spent two more hours chipping out the build-up and replacing the small pipe leading to the pressure switch before he said they couldn't finish because they had to go home and make a gasket for two pieces to be put back together. "What time are you going to be up tomorrow [Sunday] morning?" "What time can you get here?"
They were back at 8 am Sunday morning. Everything was put back together and checked out several times before Bob Burrows said he was satisfied and, most importantly, his wife Sissy was satisfied too.
While he worked we talked about Alaska, New Orleans, Nova Scotia, Montana, and RVing around the country. Ice shops old and new in the area. Lots of other stuff too. I learned his son usually does the repair work while he does the well drilling. But the younger Burrows spends the weekend with his kids while Bob covers as repairman.
He had, essentially, rebuilt the pump and water was flowing like it was new. All of Saturday night and part of Sunday morning. When I asked, "How much?" I was ready to pay whatever it was. Then he said, "$400." and I couldn't write the check fast enough. More good people. And an answer to a prayer.
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