Ah, Water!

For those who have been wondering, yes, we finally have running water at the cottage. What a long few weeks it has seemed and yet, really not as bad as say, if we were pioneers living in the wilderness 200 years ago but still...

On Canada Day, my sister Janine spent another couple of hours trying out different things to see if she could get the problem fixed, to no avail. The next morning, we decided it was time to call in the professionals. She made a phone call to a plumber from the Yellow Pages around 9:30, who promised he'd have someone there that morning and would have the water running by noon. That seemed like great service indeed, especially since it was technically a long weekend. A young guy named Lucas in a very well-equipped van arrived about 11:15 and while it was slightly past noon by the time the magic happened, it wasn't much past that when the deed was done. Eureka, water!

It was pretty darned exciting, as if water was a new and previously unknown mysterious thing that had suddenly been given to us. It's funny how you take running water for granted when you have it and the things you miss when you don't - both the obvious things like a strong, hot shower or a flushing toilet, and the small things like being able to quickly rinse your hands or a dirty dish.

Not entirely sure what the actual problem was. Lucas, the rather young (or so I thought) plumber, checked out everything my sister had done over the past few weeks and was suitably impressed by what she had accomplished - as he should have been, she'd done a lot: replaced both the pump and the pressure tank as well as 100 feet of water line and repaired a broken pipe under the cottage - and didn't find fault with any of it. In the end, I think it was the fact that we had too much air in the water line leading up from the lake. He used a hand pump to empty that out which brought in enough water to get the pump primed and presto, we were off to the races.

Lucas stayed about two hours in total (at a cost of $80 per hour, plus a charge for travelling time and of course, the dreaded HST) as while we had him there, we thought we might as well get him to look at a few extra things that needed attention, like a pipe under the kitchen sink that had suddenly disconnected itself last week and the toilet, which hadn't been flushing properly for the past 2 summers, but it was worth every penny.

Every year, we learn just a little more about how the cottage works. 2010 shall go on record as the year of the pump.