The Header Tank lives in the roof of the house, and provides cold water to the kitchen and Geyser by gravity feed. Some gunk had found its way into the ball valve that regulates the water inlet. Oh Joy! An hour spent hacking about in the (cooking hot!) ceiling above the main bedroom, doubled over in the cramped, dark, hot and humid ceiling-space, gammy knee complaining all the while about the weird angles it is forced to whilst supporting the weight of Me, whilst simultaneously trying to avoid putting a foot through the ceiling-panels, dismantling and rebuilding fiddly gunky bits. Did I mention it was hot and foetid up there?
Two days later, upon awakening, I stumbled downstairs, mumbled my way to the kettle to start my accustomed Morning Herb Tea (fresh Yarrow, Rosemary and Spearmint, if you must know!) But... no blue light from the kettle! Ugh. A glance at the microwave clock confirmed: No power. Given current circumstances with the State Owned Electricity Kakistopoly I leapt to the obvious conclusion -- a power outage. But no! For once Eskom were off the hook; our Earth Leakage tripswitch had quite perfectly done its job.
Having some days previous noticed a tiny leak from the house water-pump, I immediately and correctly fingered the culprit. Clearly, some water had found its way into the pump electronics or motor. I had already investigated the various cost options for replacing the motor and/or pressure dome and or other associated bits and pieces. But, judging by the evidence, Herr Murphy's Famous Law had beaten me in our race to A Fix Or Bust.
Easily fixed, at any rate. Take the bladder out of the dome, dry everything out. Replace. Repressurise the dome -- which is what makes the whole pressure-switch system work in the first place -- and we're done. Unfortunately, along the way, I discovered the source of the original -- tiny!very tiny! -- leak. The base-plate of the dome had corroded and developed a pinprick-sized hole. A quick trip into town to the farm-supply place confirmed my most jaded guess: Buying a replacement base-plate is not an option. One is forced to buy an entire new pressure dome (including bladder and base-plate) despite the fact that only one piece is faulty. All Hail the Kakistopoly at work!
Nothing daunted, I returned home and got to work with some epoxy resin, and patched the corrosion. Not for the first time, either.
Along the way of fixing the pump and its associated machinery, I decided to replace a couple of the fittings which were badly corroded. Not too surprising after 14 years, really, but I have to ask, who the hell makes water fitting with Steel instead of Brass? I mean, what were they thinking? Had their brains been surgically removed? Or had they simply never heard of Rust? (The lower-left picture tells the story...)
Put all back together, along with a couple of other minor fixes -- like replacing the electrical cable from the motor to the switch, which the manufacturers decided to supply just exactly 5mm too short to allow the entire structure to be assembled in such a way that makes it impossible for water to leak onto the pump electrics, no matter what. All Hail to the Kakistopoly! This involved dismantling the little box housing the electrics and then searching for some of those little round metal wire-connector goodies, which involved...
You get the idea. It is my belief that any single job, if allowed, is fractally composed of smaller jobs that need doing first, each of which is, in turn composed of yet smaller, but conceptually identical (but different in their details and implementation) jobs,... and so ad infinitum.
Stuck the whole business back together. "Throw the Switch, Igor!"
"Yeth, Marthter!"
Click.
Tripped the damn Earth Leakage again, didn't I?
Choices. Life is full of choices. I could move back to Cape Town, get a well-paid job as a software designer or architect, live in a little flat in Kloof Nek or Bantry Bay, and be able to afford hiring Someone Else to take care of this sort of shit, or... I could spend the next couple of hours dismantling the motor to see whether I can dry it out and make it work again, with no assurance that this will work, nor any experience of doing anything vaguely like it before.
Anyway, a solid tap with the hammer got the motor into pieces, and 10 minutes with a hair-dryer had it all nicely dried out. Would it ever work again?
"Throw the Switch, Igor!"
"Yeth, Marthter!"
Click. Hummmmmmmm...
R1200 -- the cost of a new pump -- saved. And only a morning spent. Until the next time.
[1] Is there actually such a word?
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