All the water we’ve missed this spring seems to have saved itself for September. What a bucketload of water! It’s a real swamp around my house, but thankfully I’m high and dry. It’s nice that my water tank is loaded, but that’s only helpful with a working water pump…
Unfortunately, it broke down. I have a water pump to pump the rainwater out of my 1000 liter tank back into my house. Within a year, I’ve had a leaky suction hose three times. This time another part had issues: the water came out of the transparent window-turn cap thingy (I don’t know how else to describe it ;) ). That should not be happening. Boy bought the pump for me last year and contacted the supplier. It was still within warranty but it meant sending the pump back in its original package and the instruction manual. Can you believe it? Who’s going to save a box like that? Especially, in a Tiny House? But Boy was smart enough to actually keep the box, so the pump got sent back this past Wednesday. It takes weeks before something like this is returned and up and running again. I wasn’t looking forward to being without running water for weeks…
I was actually without for a few days already, but because it kept raining I just put a bucket under the stream of water running from my awning, so I could use that. It was easier than getting water out of the tank and the bucket filled up soon enough with all this rain. But another couple of weeks without water wasn’t an exciting prospect, so I managed to get a temporary replacement for the pump. I could even choose from two! Thanks Dad and Cees from the Urban Earthship! Incredible how happy you can be with running water. There was another hiccup though. Somehow some water got into the socket near the pump causing the Easysolar to shut down. I found this out in the morning, because the lights wouldn’t turn on. I suspected the replacement pump was the problem, looked at my color control screen but there was more than enough power in the batteries…With the help of Cees from Victron Energy I soon found out that a short-circuit was the problem and after a day of drying up, everything worked fine again.
These kinds of problems can keep you pretty busy! If everything is working properly it’s a good life here, but sometimes things just get defective. But still, these things happen in a ‘normal’ house too, right? Anyway, yesterday morning I finally got to take a bath again. It had been pretty frustrating, seeing all that water come down, knowing your tank is actually overflowing, but you can’t use it because of a broken pump. So, I really enjoyed my bath again! Plenty of water, and I also have more than enough electricity and gas. I do need to fill up my second gas tank one of these days; it’s been empty for quite a while. I’d rather have a full backup tank just in case I’m running a bath and halfway finding out my tank is empty ;) The cold season is coming up again, so I’m having it filled with propane. For the summer, LPG is fine, but when it’s very cold the butane won’t gasify any more and my tankless water heater can’t handle the mixture. I found this out last winter, and when I switched to propane everything worked fine again.
In the meantime, I’m preparing myself for the colder weather, with the help of Raymond from the Earthship and Kenneth. They are going to make a casket to cover the water pipe outside by the water tank. We will then insulate it. Our idea is to use straw where prodigy Jan Assies from Alkmaar will then grow fungus. Jan does fantastic things with fungus; they grow on waste. That’s a fun project right, insulating my water pipe? While I was working hard on the Tiny House Nederland Jamboree, Ray took the time to improve the porch roof of my log shed and cleaned out the trench. That makes such a big difference to all the wetness around my house. And Hella? She couldn’t care less. All this water is making the mice flee from their hiding places – so it’s hunting season! ;)
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