Just when you think everything is ok

Our borehole has frozen up again this is the second time since we have been here... I'm beginning to suspect that Al Gore's anthropogenic global warming is a load of hot air..... surely if the planet was warming up then Carmarthen would equally warm up or is Carmarthen in some kind of deep crater where sunlight doesn't shine and liquid nitrogen is a solid ????

So there I was this morning with my beany hat on and my borrowed gloves which were three sizes too small for my hands, unscrewing a 1" water pipe which wasn't playing ball at all.....and with all the grunting and swearing at these non moving alkathene pipe fittings, I of course forgot that the enormously empty tank in the loft was calling for water from the borehole pump 80 metres below ground ... (where hopefully the frozen ground hadn't reached it) .... I was right and just as I uncoupled the pipe it let me know by spraying freezing cold water all over me..... you haven't seen me run so fast across the skating rink of a driveway with legs flying up in the air with water dripping from my eyebrows as I fell into the out house to turn off the bore hole power supply..... the gush eventually slowed to a trickle then stopped....

I then had the task of removing the pipe fittings off the existing alkthene piping .... I don't know if you've ever felt alkathene water pipe (it's blue) but even in the hottest of summers it's easier to bend a car door than a length of alkathene piping.... needless to say when it's a few degrees below freezing it takes on the properties of a steel pipe.... with the help of a screwdriver I managed to prise off the fittings and put them on the "warmer" replacement pipe... I now have a space heater in the out house warming the above ground pipe which is solid with ice....

I only found that out by connecting the ice free "emergency" water pipe to the existing above ground piping switching on the borehole again ......only to hear it hiss loudly then come apart with the explosive force of a small hand grenade and whipping my left thigh as it lashed back (some people pay good money for that kind of treatment).... that's when I found out the other piping was solid with ice.... Oh Joy !!!

Yes we may have free water 365 days a year.... but I bet most householders don't have to run an external pipe across their driveways when a snowflake falls on their roof !!!

I've got a space heater in the out house now warming up the room..... I've also had the hair dryer in there in close contact with the pipe.... it's still creaking with ice ..... ah well time and several thousand kilowatts of electric heating will sort it out...... bugger ......that's another penguin fallen off it's melting ice perch in Antarctica .......

(20 minutes later)......

I've just come back from turning the bore hole back on and WHOOSH !!! the ice plug flew up the pipe and sploshed into the water tank RESULT !! running water... I've just got to keep it running now or the pipe will freeze again overnight !!!

The joys of living out in the sticks eh ?