Another beautiful day of clear skies and warm temperatures greeted me as I awoke. In so many ways this is truly the Land of Enchantment that is so long as you have water. While I went to feed, Rudy went into town to talk to the pump man. He agreed that it was probably the pressure tank that was the problem, but when they went down to the pump house there was a river of water flowing. The main water line from the pump house had broken. Because everything had been frozen there was no sign of a water leak. All this time, and a simple broken pipe was the cause of all our trial, and tribulation. Mind you that is about a fifteen-minute repair job. Rudy was so frustrated that he went ahead and had them fix the line. Our pressure gauge was also dead so we had that replaced as well. They showed me what to do to get the pressure back up, and went on their way.
By now it was 11:00 in the morning. Rudy went into Ruidoso, and I babysat the pump while the pressure built. Since whoever put in the pump had put it in the wrong spot, I had to turn the pump on till the pressure stopped climbing, wait 10 to 15 minutes and turn it on again. Well I wasn’t about to just sit there so I started cleaning. Our packrat friends had made a total mess of things. I also had to clean off the spray on foam that Rudy put on the pipes so I could remove the heat tapes that more than likely were no longer working. That would be replaced by proper foam pipe insulation.
I love packrats, I know I’m weird, but they are adorable with their oversized ears. I do not however like their nest building habits. My gloves were up at the house and I didn’t really feel like running up there just to get a pair of gloves, so I went without. Besides lots of dirt, pinion nutshells, and insulation they pulled from the tank wrapper, there was lots of dried out jumping cactus. I realize that this is perfect to deter other creatures from disturbing their nest of babies, but I’m sorry, I’m not a predator, and I don’t appreciate cactus spines in my fingers. I found a stick to pull out the dirt from the back of the house forward, after which I separated the cactus with a gardening hand fork. The rest I pulled out by hand. I also pulled out a small lizard that was sleeping in the pump house for the winter. I felt so bad for having to wake him up, but he had to be awake enough to burrow back into the warm dry dirt when I put him back. I left just enough loose dirt for him to burrow in.
All of this took about 2 hours before the pump got up to 55 psi and shut off by itself. By that time Rudy was back. We went up to the house to move the water tank that still had some water in it, and slid it into the gator. I’ll take care of that tomorrow along with a lot of other things. The kitchen was such a disaster I had to clean it, but it would have to wait till we had pressure at the house. The barn gets all the water first and it takes a long time to fill all the water pipes and tanks. It was another long day, but my kitchen is now clean (the rest of the house isn’t), Rudy’s laundry is done, and I was able to finally fix Rudy (and myself) a good home cooked meal. He got a load for tomorrow going to Fresno, and I have a lot of work to do. After all this, I feel I am entitled to finally go riding tomorrow. What do you want to bet it will either be cloudy, rainy, or windy tomorrow, or all of the above?
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