Day 5, We've got Power!

Life is good once again!

Rose made a call to PSNH (several actually, along with most of my neighbors who made 3+ calls each)  PSNH said that their automated outage system fails sometimes, they were unaware we had no power apparently. 

So this morning a white PSNH pickup shows up and talked to Rose after another call and went by all of my neighbors homes who were also running generators and asked if we'd checked our breaker box, (ahh, Yeah, we did)

He said that the system that they look at to tell them the street has power says we're up!  (Nope, sorry no power), he told Rose that as she was nice as she hadn't yelled at him or threatened him and that he'd surely get someone over here to get us power asap. 

Well at 5:30pm the CAVALRY ARRIVED!  Rose said an entire fleet of trucks pulled up Riverdale and as far as you could see up and down Riverdale Road was Yellow PSNH and PIKE (Tenn or NC) trucks.  After a short lived problem with an inoperable bucket that wouldn't go up they quickly swapped trucks had power down at the barn and the living room lit up in short order.

Thanks PSNH lineman! 

We appreciate your help in getting us back to normal!

You thought that was it huh? Nope.

So Rose called while I was driving home and said she had no water at the faucets and the pump wasn't running,  Odd I thought, so I had her go check the pump in the cellar and turn it off if it's running, and sure enough it was running dry... 

Oh no! I though maybe we'd lost the foot valve down in the well letting all the water drain back from the pump in the basement all the way back down into the well 200 feet+ away.  The thought of having to prime the line all the way back to the well was not a good one, dumping 32 or so gallons (yeah I did the math) of water into a Tee one gallon at a time was not something I wanted to do this evening.  I tried to get the pump to prime turning it on and off again several times to no avail.  I felt the pump it was warm but not hot, the expansion tank was completely empty.  Then I felt the brass check valve to the right of the pump and it was COLD.  Maybe, just maybe...  I got my adjustable wrench, opened the pump cap sloowly... dumped in 1/2 gallon of water and plugged her back up.  I turned on the pump to hear a familiar swoosh as the pump pulled water up from the well, the pressure gauge jumped to 25 lbs and stayed there though concerning me a bit, I had Rose open the kitchen faucet and the pressure began to climb one pound at a time up to 50 lbs after 10 minutes we were back in business, whew what a relief!