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No problem, it has happened many times before, so I got into my old jeans picked up my tool kit and torch and left the apartment to head for the bore hole to sort out the problem. It was only halfway down the stairs when I remembered we are not on the farm we are in Portugal and the water was not my problem any more so a quick phone call to the landlord and the problem was sorted in an hour.
But it did though remind me of an episode that happened some time ago in our early days at the Bury farm.
Moving in had been a culture shock what with septic tank sewage, roads not made up, no streetlights, electricity always going off, but at least we had mains water.
The first sign of trouble came one day while I was in the shower and the water suddenly stopped. so I dry off, get dressed and walk over up the land to the water tanks to find them empty.
It’s typically complicated but the water is supplied to an underground tank with an electric pump on the other side of a motorway half a mile away and pumped underground to the tanks on the farm and then gravity fed back down to the house.
I walked the half mile to the tanks and found them to be full and the pump running so where on earth or should I say where under earth was the water going? I made a call to the water company who said that it was nothing whatsoever to do with them as the pump and underground pipe were on private land.
Water
First problem, get some water. Out I go to buy some plastic Gerry cans, try that with soapy shampoo still clinging to your head, find some eventually and mid afternoon have 20 gallons of water.
Next problem is to find the leak. I have done a bit of dowsing in my time so out come the trusty rods and I walk over the possible route to find the underground pipe. It’s late September and getting towards dusk but I get a possible hit on the location of the pipe so out comes the old JCB and I start digging around to try to find the pipe.
One almighty flash, bang and wallop as I hit an underground electricity cable. What a coincidence I think, that at just the same time all the motorway lights go out in both directions.
I phone the electric board who come out at 9pm nine o clock that evening confirming that indeed I have dug up the 440 volt cable servicing the motorway and point out to me that just below this cable is the 6,000 volt cable supplying half of Bury. Quite jovially pointing out if I had hit that cable I could have been buried in the hole I had just dug saving the cost of a funeral. You need a sense of humour to live in the countryside and an even bigger one when you get the bill from the electricity board for the repairs to the cable.
Picture the scene, pitch black, knackered, electric men everywhere, no water, hair still plastered to my head with the dried up shampoo, me staring into a big black hole when I look up the lane and see an eerie white light hovering about five foot above ground and slowing coming towards me. I am beginning to doubt the wisdom of the move to the countryside and thinking perhaps I am hallucinating.
The floating, bobbing white light comes slowly closer and much to my relief turns out to be the son of a neighbour out for a walk who for his own reasons was wearing a miner’s lamp on his head.
Another day dawns with still no sign of water. I phone the water people again only to be told that someone has put a flag on the computer telling them not even talk to me.
I finally get hold of a company who has a water bowser to come up with 500 gallons to fill up the tanks. Now we are cooking on gas, metaphorically speaking as of course we don’t have gas.
The water fills the header tanks and in triumph I turn on the taps in the house, nothing. The whole house, 90 foot long of it, is now air locked and nothing will shift the air.
Resourceful as ever, off I go to and buy a big suction pump and attach it in turn to all the taps in the house sucking out the air and very slowly water starts to return.
The last tap is in the hall cloakroom. This pump is heavy and I am no spring chicken and in the excitement of being able to turn a tap and water comes out I drop the pump onto the toilet seat breaking it into several pieces.
The seat of course was a perfect colour match to the rest of the suite and no longer available. Pat decides that a weeks worth of dirty washing is a priority for her and two hours later I am summoned to the laundry room in response to an almighty scream, all the clothes are a light shade of grey.
When the tanks were filling the incoming water stirred up the sediment in the bottom of the tanks, which has found its way through the house. During the next week every tap, toilet and ballcock has to be stripped down and new washers fitted.
I still, have no idea where the mains water in the leaking pipe is going. After three weeks of fruitless searching, digging holes here dowsing there it dawns on me that the pipe is probably leaking under the motorway and after a few phone calls am told that they will have to partially close the M66, dig it up and fit a new pipe. I asked them for a price and was told that if I sold the farm I could just about afford to pay the bill.
A bore hole has to be the answer. The big machine starts the weeklong process of drilling. In the mean time several loads of water fail to turn up and we run the tanks dry twice more with all the fun and games that entails.
In the morning I am Chatting to the engineer, I discover we who says they will soon strike water, or liquid gold as I am now beginning to think of it, and was told I aware that the first load of water coming up from the hole will be a thick gluey mess that sticks to everything, but will eventual settle.
Sandbags
They are digging the borehole on the other side of the cobbled road that runs between the house and the land and if this mess runs down it will never come off. Sand bags are the answer and I get 10 ton of sand and some hessian bags delivered. If you have never filled 200 sandbags by holding them open with your left hand whilst filling them with your right you have never truly lived. The sand bags are eventually filled and with my slightly elongated and aching arms I lay them all out to form a channel for the muddy water to run down the road.
The following week we have water coming out of the hole. After two weeks it becomes apparent that when the borehole settles it picks up loads of mud and this only clears after 20 minutes to give clean water.
I dig a manhole next to the wellhead and devise a system of valves and timers to run the water to waste for half an hour before starting to fill the tanks.
Christmas is fast approaching and I am slowly starting to relax a bit when the water goes off again. Nine o’clock at night, Pitch black and snowing I go out feeling somewhat at a lowish ebb taking my torch and tools to the wellhead. As I kneel down, melting snow trickling down my neck I get a terrible pain in my knee I have accidentally knelt on the raised edge of the manhole and can’t stand up with the pain.
For the first time in my life defeat stares me straight in the face. I know what to do. I will crawl to the house sneak in get my credit card leave my beloved wife a note saying to tell that I am not leaving her forever but am just going to Manchester Airport and getting a plane to somewhere warm that has water and I will be back in a week. The only part of the thought that came to fruition was the crawl back to the house.
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