Day Two Without Water
Apr. 18th, 2023 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aWell, we're now 48+ hours without water, except in two minute increments when I turn on the water valve.
After a very annoying Monday, we picked up a few necessities in town yesterday evening. I filled two five gallon bottles for our water dispenser, which was good because we were on the verge of _actually_ running out of potable water. We got some wet wipes and new hand sanitizer, which turned out to be not as sticky or smelly as the huge jug we got a year or so into the pandemic (after panic runs on hand sanitizer had cleared the shelf for a while). We also got plenty of bottled water, which has made us more willing to use it for rinsing off dishes, wetting tooth brushes, and that sort of thing. (And will be hurricane supplies come this summer.)
So today wasn't as annoying as yesterday.
We _did_ get a plumber out here today. He arrived in the late morning, which was about 2.30pm Hawaii time. He gamely investigated the problem in the medium-hard rain (yeah, that's irony: plenty of water outside today!).
The problem apparently is where the metal pipe from our meter meets up with the plastic pipe that runs under the ground toward our house. They'd been screwed together too tightly and one (I assume the plastic one) had eventually cracked or something. There was apparently some problem with something being low quality too. Maybe the sealant between the two?
We saw the cost cutting in the original construction of this house when we were working on the lanai too. Lots of non-stainless steel screws, which had totally corroded and so couldn't be easily removed. Nothing excessive: it's a well-built house. But apparently when they could reasonably go with something cheaper that wouldn't cause problems for 20 years, they did.
(20 years later ...)
So that's day one of what has become a week of getting things fixed.
Tomorrow, as long as it's not raining hard enough to cause problems with applying sealant to pipes, we should have water back. Mike the plumber from Kapaa seems great.
And tomorrow afternoon my dad and I will also start putting our lanai back together, though no way we get done with it tomorrow.
Thursday is the car, and Friday is the vet.
After a very annoying Monday, we picked up a few necessities in town yesterday evening. I filled two five gallon bottles for our water dispenser, which was good because we were on the verge of _actually_ running out of potable water. We got some wet wipes and new hand sanitizer, which turned out to be not as sticky or smelly as the huge jug we got a year or so into the pandemic (after panic runs on hand sanitizer had cleared the shelf for a while). We also got plenty of bottled water, which has made us more willing to use it for rinsing off dishes, wetting tooth brushes, and that sort of thing. (And will be hurricane supplies come this summer.)
So today wasn't as annoying as yesterday.
We _did_ get a plumber out here today. He arrived in the late morning, which was about 2.30pm Hawaii time. He gamely investigated the problem in the medium-hard rain (yeah, that's irony: plenty of water outside today!).
The problem apparently is where the metal pipe from our meter meets up with the plastic pipe that runs under the ground toward our house. They'd been screwed together too tightly and one (I assume the plastic one) had eventually cracked or something. There was apparently some problem with something being low quality too. Maybe the sealant between the two?
We saw the cost cutting in the original construction of this house when we were working on the lanai too. Lots of non-stainless steel screws, which had totally corroded and so couldn't be easily removed. Nothing excessive: it's a well-built house. But apparently when they could reasonably go with something cheaper that wouldn't cause problems for 20 years, they did.
(20 years later ...)
So that's day one of what has become a week of getting things fixed.
Tomorrow, as long as it's not raining hard enough to cause problems with applying sealant to pipes, we should have water back. Mike the plumber from Kapaa seems great.
And tomorrow afternoon my dad and I will also start putting our lanai back together, though no way we get done with it tomorrow.
Thursday is the car, and Friday is the vet.