AHHHHH! No Water! Now What?

Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

That's how I felt in the summer of 2009. Our water well went nuts and after 3 months of dragging hoses and filling buckets we finally got our water back. It lasted until February of 2010 when it went completely out and we had to get a new well. So I can feel the pain of those having no water and it is the one thing I focused on first.

"How would I get water from my well if I had no power for a long period of time?

There are a few options that I will explain as we go along on our journey but the first is quite simple if you are able. If you are the only one without power and live close enough to a neighbor, who is friendly, you can hook a hose from their house to yours using the outside facets. This will pressurize your house and allow you to get water from your inside faucets. Yea! You can flush the toilet! We were able to do this with our neighbor but we only hooked on for about 10 minutes a day, just to flush and fill lots of bottles, pans, and buckets. Our outside faucet leaked so we couldn't leave it permanently hooked up and we always asked before we did, just to make sure they were not using it or in the middle of a shower or something. Never take for granted the kindness of a neighbor, always be respectful and ask. If they were not home, we would fill our bottles, buckets and pans with water from our neighbor across the street and use a wagon to pull them home. We would go to a relatives once or twice a week to take showers and do a load or two of laundry. My mother has a saying "Think of it as your opportunity for holiness" whenever I didn't want to do something. Well, as you might be asking God, "Why me, Lord?", it just may be that he is giving some else that opportunity for holiness by helping you. My husband and I have truly felt God's loves through our family and friends. I will tell you though, I was really happy when God was done giving everyone that chance for holiness and we got our water back after 3 months. You really learn to appreciate your water when it has been taken from you for a long period of time. Let's move on.

You now know you can use a hose to get water from your neighbor, but what if everyone is without power, then what? I must say here that I only have knowledge of a private well and all its workings, I have not experienced being on city water so I am not sure how that all works. Moving on, our water well is 135ft deep so if I needed to get water its way down there. So how will I get it? That leads us to some other options like a hand pump. If you are able and can afford it you can have a hand pump installed on your existing water well. I am talking about the metal ones where you pump the handle up and down. I have found one that can be placed in your water well right beside your other piping and pump, but again these are expensive and depending on the size of your well can or can not work. If you are interested, one system that I found is called a Simple Pump found here. The plus side of having one of these systems is that you never have to worry about water because you can always get it no matter what, but the down side is the cost and that it might not work for your well. We can't afford one of these so my journey for knowledge continues.

Let's explore the "I have little money and can't afford a metal hand pump system" train of thought. How can I get water from my well? In my quest for knowledge I found a few hand pumps that would work no matter how deep your water well is and in the next few days we will explore the different options available
so you can get ready and be prepared.

The more we know about any particular subject and the inner workings of it we can devise our own plans on the fly. The more you learn, the more you look at everyday objects differently becoming your own Macgyver of sorts. When you are out and about you might find things that will be helpful and pick them up little by little either for free or really cheap. That's why our motto is "Knowledge is Power!" The more we know the better off we will be.

Until tomorrow,

Lady Apprentice :)