Dare To Be Stupid

Some bloggers write only about the happy, successful events of their lives, choosing to present a Pollyanna view of their world to their readers. Other bloggers seem to use their writings as a vent-all for everything wrong in their lives and others still just avoid all personal references all together by simply posting photographs. I don't criticize any of these; it's every person's right to blog how they want to! But I do, on the other hand, try to present an even flow, a happy medium between senseless joy and head-banging dismality. Even so, I thought seriously about not presenting this post. Just wipe it out and none of you would be the wiser. However, it does have a good lesson in it; one that is best learned by you observing someone else's stupidity, rather than risk yourself. And lest any of you think that I am truly, always Queen of the Universe, I do present this story to remind you that even I don't always know what the hell I'm doing. There is much to be said for sheer determination in the face of adversity but there should also be much said for not being impatient and getting aggravated easily.
So, you know of the problems that occurred last week with the water pump and my struggle to correct this malfunction, which I did. Well, not one day after my 'success', I was thwarted again when I got up that morning and realized I had no water again. I resigned myself to the situation and walked down to the spring and pump house to see what the problem was. Upon arriving at the spring, I saw that an old, rubber coupling had let go (I failed to check if it was still tight) and the water line was just laying open. Now, here is where I made my first mistake. I forgot that this end of the line had a backflow preventer installed, so the water in the line would not run out in such a situation. It also has a regular shut-off valve below the preventer, and knowing this was open, I assumed all the water below the pump had run out. This meant, in my mind, that the pump and all lines below, would need to be reprimed. So, I put the line back together, actually moving the footvalve back to the original spring (more about this later) and then going up to the pump house to see what was going on there.
When I got to the pump house, the pressure tank was registering about 40 lbs, but knowing that just air was coming out of the lines at the house, I was skeptical that was water in the tank. I opened the drain cock on the pressure tank, and sure enough, just air came out. So, I thought I bled the pressure off the tank. Second mistake here. I was tired and aggravated and I guess I just didn't wait long enough to see that all the pressure was off. Now, some of you who are knowledgeable of such things may be grimacing and squirming in your seats right about now. You can guess what I did. I got my other tools and checked the fittings on the pump. Everything seemed okay there. All the new iron fittings had held, no apparent leaks etc. So, thinking that the line coming into the pump was dry and the pressure tank was empty, I knew I needed to prime the pump and lines so that it could start to draw water again. So, I unscrewed the plug on the top of the pump. Now, if you have never been busted in the face with a one inch, steel plug going oh, about 40 mph, it is a difficult sensation to describe to you. The odd thing is, I can't really say that it hurt. I think pain of that magnitude just goes over to shock. I knew right away something was wrong but couldn't really say what. Then I saw blood dripping on my shirt sleeve. At this point I just sat down and called Allen. He was the closest person that I knew would know what to do. After a few moments, I regained some sense (not much) and saw that the bleeding had stopped, so I went back to work trying to get the pump going. It would run but didn't seem to be drawing water. Allen arrived after a while and when he walked up I could tell from the look on his face that something more was wrong with my face. I thought the force of pressure had just bloodied my nose a little. Not so. The plug had cut a line from my nose down to my lip and it was swelling now. Real pretty. I am extremely fortunate that it had not hit me in the eye or forehead though. In the end, Allen got the pump running again. I had just not let it run long enough and while it took a considerable amount of time to get the air out of the lines, everything cleared out and all is functioning well now.
So, the moral of this little story is this: not much is so bad that it can't be fixed, so don't go to work on something with a crappy attitude and get in a hurry. You are the one that is going to suffer if something goes wrong. Check out the whole situation and if you are not sure about something, ASK somebody who would know.

*Weird Al Yankovic