A Job "Well" Done

Or is that "All's Well That Ends Well"? Either way, the new pump works and we have water. I couldn't be happier...
On Tuesday afternoon, after the mayhem of Sandy the SuperStorm had blown by, the Pump Crew reconvened and the new pump (see above photo) was connected and ready to be sent back down, all 250 plus feet into obscurity. You spend hundreds of dollars for a part that you'll hopefully never see again... Not like conspicuous consumption!
Anyway, feeding the pipe back down was easier as you're not hauling the pump up, but the pipe had to be cleaned so that the well isn't contaminated with leaves and boogers and junk. Dumping a bottle of chlorine in helps, too.

That's Bob laughing at my attempts at "photo ops". I was yelling from my position as caboose to "hold the line" as I ran into the house to get the camera. But this picture does give some sense of scale. This is a good 7/8 of the way through the threading the pipe back down. Fortunately, no disaster like kinking pipe or frayed wiring occurred.
About an hour later, after refilling the tank with air and testing, we had water. It smelled like chlorine and I can't say I'd drink it or cook with it yet, but flushing the toilet was sheer joy.

What to do in Event of a Hurricane

There we are (I'm on photos) preparing to hoist the pump approximately 250 feet out of the ground. The day is stormy but not totally woolly yet; winds picking up with light rain. More blustery than actual hurricane.
Time is certainly of the essence as our power is still on and there's not much sense in fixing the pump if we can't even test to see if it works!

Here's a small section of what the pipe looks like. We hauled and hauled and I was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down the end of our driveway, lugging the very end. Bob and Joe were closer to the well head and Andy pulled the pump up from the ground. The pipe is only like three inches around but over 260 feet long with several wires running down to the pump. How this stuff works to bring us water is beyond me!

Here's Joe in the carport (my future studio) cleaning out the pump housing. The pump is indeed shot- it's old and tired! But as luck would have it, Andy called the plumbing supply place and they were just closing. But the highway was being closed, too, so we would never have gotten there in time anyway. 

We're on track to complete the project today as the weather has held off, Sandy seems to have spun herself away from us and there are actually patches of blue sky!