You never miss the water until the well runs dry.

We woke up at midnight to find we had no water.  Yikes!  So we wandered around in the dark looking for faucets that could have been left on (no luck) and realized that the well had run dry.

Fortunately, we have a backup system where we can turn a valve and switch to the lake irrigation system water.  When we switched, the lake pump never quit running, so we knew we had a serious leak somewhere.  The lake is an unlimited supply of water, so we left the pump running all night so that we could still have water.  After we did that at midnight, we tried to sleep while we waited for light. When we got up this morning, we isolated the problem to the log house, so we started digging.

Fortunately we have tools so it wasn't all done by hand, but we had to avoid propane lines, phone lines, and power lines that also cross the yard where we have water lines for both the lake system and the well system.

That tiny yellow line is the propane line - we managed to find it and the phone line without damaging them.

 The exposed pipe is from an old water line - this house was built in 1940, and water piped from the lake in the years before the well was installed.  As we dug, we had to identify every line we found to avoid destroying something we still use.

We found the leak at the very end of the line - when we were just about ready to give up - When you have the most perkable soils in the history of the world, you have to be within a foot of a 5000 gallon leak to see any evidence of it. 

The leak is repaired, but both of us may need a few hours of rest to get ourselves repaired.  We can cover up our digging tomorrow!

Wind Storm at our House in the Forest

When we built our house two years ago, we debated taking out more trees.  I posed the question on Facebook about whether we should take out enough trees to make a good solar site for our south facing roof, and the tree huggers came out of the woodwork.  Partly because of that reaction from the general public, we left more trees than was prudent.  Last night we paid the price for that decision!

When we returned through a ferocious wind storm last night from an evening of playing cards with friends in Mt Vernon, we were happy when our motion sensor light came on and we knew we had power.  Then we noticed the tree that had fallen on the house.

As soon as it got light this morning, I went out and took pictures, and it didn't look much better in the light of day, but at least it hadn't leaked overnight.

The tree broke when it hit the house, and the top landed on the back side of the house.  At least it missed all three of our skylights!

A friend recommended Chad White, Evolution Tree Experts LLC,  (425 754-4196) and they were able to get out today to deal with the tree.  Chad arrived with a crew of five men, the sharpest chainsaws I have ever seen, a bucket truck, a chipper, and a powerful blower.  We can highly recommend this company!  They did a super job of getting all the branches, the tree itself, and all the debris removed without further harming the roof.  They even put a tarp over the four puncture holes that we discovered when the tree and debris were removed.

We ended up with a pile of firewood and a pile of woodchips that I will use to mulch my flower beds.

We have the Wayne Perrigoue, our builder, coming out in the morning to assess the structural and roof damage, so hopefully, it will soon be "like it never happened".