As you can probably surmise from the title of this particular entry, our adventures into homeownership are not going as well as I'd like. We've owned four homes now (this is the fourth and technically the first one was a townhouse but you get the idea) and none of them have ever been this...complicated.
Some of it is our fault. After the HUGE move last year to our new house (the one with absolutely no problems...at least maintenance-wise), I couldn't face the idea of ordering boxes and packing up the whole house again. So, we're doing this the gradual way. Which allows us to take over a few boxes at a time and put things away. But I'm beginning to think this is akin to slow band-aid removal. Except worse. This is the slow removal of duct tape over some particularly hairy patch of skin. It's dragging out soooooo long, and I never feel like I can relax because there are always more boxes to bring over or pack. But our current house is under contract, so at least I know there's an end in sight, September 13, as a matter of fact.
Plus, then there are issues. Our new house (which is, in fact, older than our old house...ha! Figure that one out!) doesn't have city water. So, now we're wrangling with well water and a water softener and 40 pound bags of salt. (Also, wherever it says "we" or "our" in this entry, please read it as "me" or "I" or "my" as appropriate since my loving husband, who is working very hard to be a success in two different careers at the same time, has delegated the bulk of this lovely task to me. Yeah...I'm so getting a freaking amazing anniversary gift this year. *grin*)
I've never had well water before. I thought it would be pretty easy. It's just a hole in the ground with water, right? How complicated can it be? Well, let me tell you, way more complicated than it sounds. You have to have the water tested and then you have to have the well "shocked," which, contrary to my wishful thinking, does not involve standing in front of the well and swearing a blue streak. Instead, it involves huge amounts of chlorine that go into your pipes and clear out all the muck. Sounds good , right? Except all the muck has to come out somewhere. It fills up your sinks, bathtubs, showers and toilet with black silt-y muck. That, of course, now has to be cleaned up.
Seriously, I've stepped into a remake of The Money Pit. Remember that scene where Shelley Long's character turns on the water in the tub and it comes out all black and clumpy? So very close to the truth. Tom Hanks's character tells her it'll be all right and she says, "You didn't see that water!" I can relate to this now. I'm waiting for my trees to collapse ("We have very weak trees.") and the oven to shoot a turkey out through the window and into the bathroom. Of course, for that to happen, I'd probably have to put the turkey in the oven first. And we all know how inclined I am toward cooking.
Anyway, all this babbling is simply to explain why I've been a bit of an absentee blogger of late. I'm hoping things will get better soon. After all, September 13 is less than a month away. And, hey, you know if anyone else wants to see what horror my new (old) house will throw at me next, please feel free to join me in the packing, the moving, the unpacking and cleaning of black mucky silt of every available surface (yes, for muck it was surprisingly "splashy"). : )
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2 comments:
Shocking the well? That seems...odd. Perhaps it's a county ordinance? That's certainly nothing we had to do when we moved to our place (which is well and septic).
Very strange indeed...
We had to shock the well because the day before closing we found out that our well did not pass inspection. Not because there was anything bad in it, but simply that there was too much bacteria to get a good sample...or something like that.
So, shocking the well is supposed to help eliminate the bacteria so we can pass the inspection. In theory, you don't have to do it every year. You should have your water tested every year, I guess, just to make sure it's all okay.
Fortunately, we have well water but city sewer. So no septic tank for us, thank goodness! I don't know how to deal with one of those either.
The big problem, which I didn't mention, is that for some reason our well pump shut off the other day. So...no water, black and mucky or otherwise. It's interesting that it just so happened to do so on the day the well guy came to do the shocking. But he claims he doesn't know why it stopped. It's back working again and we're just hoping it doesn't stop again.
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