One plumbing part shy of a warm shower

Well pump installer has an interesting history as an aerospace engineer in the Air Force and is now installing pumps in wells in the wilds of the Boston Mountains (southern part of the Ozark Mountains). Click pictures to view.

Wellhead on left, pressure tank on right. It was thoughtful that they swapped out the well cap to match the blue of the well tank. Sundry pressure gizmos between the two.

Digger guy. Better him than me. I have learned to really dislike ditch digging in the heat. Once he covers up all the pipe, I get a road to the cabin as a free bonus. This means I no longer have to hike all my stuff in from the road. Good!





Since the electrician was already down in position to install the Steibel Eltron electric tankless water heater, Tarr takes advantage of the situation to sniff.










No matter. The tankless water heater worked great and I just showered under the pipe end that would have connected here if I'd a had the piece. The nearest plumbing supply store is over 2 hours away. This pvc plumbing is just temporary until I get a PEX system organized. The warm water out the pipe end was SHEER BLISS.
Photo: The economy outdoor shower is affixed to a cedar tree.

The rainbow family gathering

For some reason, the Rainbow Family has decided to appear a few miles down the road. If all show up, then this will more than double the entire population of the county.

This has excited the local law enforcement officers (AKA LEOs) into a law enforcement frenzy. They are reportedly playing "What you gonna do, Bad Boys Bad Boys?" (the theme from Cops) in the morning outside the Rainbow Family campout.

LEOs. This is rude. Not that I want any of them (or anybody else) showing up unbidden at TinyCabin. But that is just not right.

Tuesday is a big day. The pump and tank guys will show up. And the electrician, too, if he can pry himself away from the more lucrative jobs involving setting up mobile command posts for the local, state and federal law dudes.

The apocalypse and well pumps

I blame a childhood where we were within the smaller concentric rings of nearly assured destruction from nuclear holocaust. The optimistic ten percent among us could expect to be wandering around burnt for up to two weeks before succumbing.

So we were packed off to elementary school and junior high school with 2 weeks of canned food and survival stuff - the grimmest sort of camp. My dad bought us dog tags so that our remains could be identified.

Families filled shelves in their basements with food and blocked off window with newspapers. As if that would help against a nuclear bomb. As a 10-year-old kid, I desperately wanted to live somewhere in the country where people didn't live with fierce anxiety that all was going to pulverize in front of their eyes. Like the Ozarks.

And its true. People here in the Ozarks never did go through that violently fearful era that I remember. Perhaps it is no surprise that I wound up building a cabin in the remote hills once I could have a little control over my life.

Which is why I wanted to have a hand pump. Just in case the old bad scenerio happens. I have however, been talked into an electric pump and a pressure tank. This is what people do nowadays. If I don't have electricity, my options for getting water are greatly reduced.

**When I got to sit at Kennedy's desk in the Oval office when Bill Clinton was in office, the first thing I did was look for the "red telephone" but all I found was a regular office phone.

Hooray. We are bored!!

When I called to pester the well digger today as usual, his mom, or whatever female voice answered, said that he had hit water at 55 feet with 6 gallons per minute. Hoooray!

Of course I haven't gotten the bill yet but it can't be too bad.

Off to investigate well pumps. Hand pumps may be the way to go at first. Eventually I want to be able to either 1. swap my rustic cabin with someone's cabin in Tuscany for temporary experiential tourism or 2. survive the total annihilation of life as we know it. Real rusticity or lack of electricity amount to the same thing here.

I dream of a hot bath.

Hired He Man Helpers are such delicate flowers

The well digger didn't drill Thursday because he needed some more well pipe and had to go get it. Fair enough.

Then the well digger didn't drill Friday because it might rain. A mud-covered well digger might get wet. So he stayed home in Ozone. That's a town in Arkansas. Really.

grrrrrrrr.

Spudding away with the cable tool

A call to the well digger last night informed me that he had punched through the limestone and was back into creek gravel. His tone of voice sounded worried. Since I don't know any better, I haven't started fretting.

Down to 40 feet. More will happen today. A dry hole is an expensive possibility.

I find out, with a little research into spudding with cable tool drills, that this is a pretty archaic method. Slow but at least he showed up after a year.

The earth's surface is violated

The well hole happens because that toothed looking thing is dropped repeatedly into a hole in the ground. The well digger guy pours water down the hole and a muddy slurry is produced and removed. The pounding thing pounds at a rate of at least once a second and gets anywhere from 2-3 feet to 1 foot per hour depending on whether it is trying to bite its way through dirt, gravel or solid limestone. Well drillers with actual drilling rigs would not come all the way out here - so we are doing the earth pounder.

At the beginning of the day, the slurry was brown mud with sand in it. Then came clay. Then came a gourgeous white limestone at the end of the day. In the second picture, you can see the well digger guy reflecting sunlight down the well hole with a mirror. He's looking for troublesome things and for information about the amount of water seeping into the hole. At the end of the first day, we have a hole about 18 feet down.

We are encouraged and leave for home.

This is from wikipedia: The oldest form of drilling machinery is the Cable Tool, still used today. Specifically designed to raise & lower a bit into the bore hole, the 'spudding' of the drill cause the bit to be raised & dropped onto the bottom of the hole, and the design of the cable causes the bit to twist at approximately 1/4 revolution per drop, thereby creating a drilling action. Unlike rotary drilling, cable tool drilling requires the drilling action to be stopped so that the bore hole can be bailed or emptied of drilled cuttings.

Boring a well in the field next to Tiny cabin

The well digging guy hinted that he had witched the well spot before he set up here. He doesn't want to be too certain because it might not work out. But then my neighbor walked over and witched water right under where the well digging rig was set up. So that's good enough for me.