Well. We had some friggin’ crazy weather here last week and on Monday. Rain literally the likes of which I’ve NEVER seen in my life here. And keep in mind, I was RAISED here. We had flooding in our yard and in the ditches over the road that I’ve never seen before. The Tampa Bay area as a whole was slammed with historic levels of rainfall.
One teensy problem with all this rain. (As in between Sunday night/Monday morning we had over TWELVE INCHES.) We have a septic tank. And this is a 60+year-old house.
When the ground is saturated, and flooded, septic tanks like ours of the older style, non-raised kind, don’t work.
Meaning we couldn’t flush. It would slooooooowly go down. Fortunately, it wasn’t backing up into the house because the house is raised up higher, not at ground level.
So my Monday morning started off with a trip to Gander Mountain to buy a camping toilet that their website lied and said they had in stock. No, didn’t have it, but they had ONE portable chemical toilet in stock, in clearance, so I actually saved like $30 on it. (Yes, it was new. I made them open the box and show me before I bought it. LOL)
Fortunately, we had a fairly dry Monday afternoon and evening and into Tuesday, so the septic tank started working again. I was awakened by Hubby to the joyous news, “We can flush!”
Which is about the only thing I would accept before, “Here’s your coffee.” LOL
THEN, we had a scare Tuesday morning with our water pressure. (We have a well.) We have a water softener that Grandaddy had installed several years before he died. (This was my grandparents’ house.) I know ZERO about it except to keep salt in it. It was cycling Tuesday morning, so I reset it because the timer had been knocked out of whack, but we still had crappy water pressure. Looking at the well gauge, there was liquid halfway in it, and it was low enough to the ground and where the well is there’s a sort of hollow, I thought hmm, maybe water got up into it. I couldn’t hear it run. So I called the well guy and switched off the breaker to the water heater to prevent a repeat water heater fiasco from a couple of years ago.
Turns out the well was fine (it’s very quiet, it turns out) and the liquid was because it’s an older gauge and of a liquid-filled type, but he said it’s not really needing replacing now. It was a problem with the water softener being choked up inside and needing a new part. (He’s the one who installed the water softener.) We only noticed the problem because usually when it cycles it’s the middle of the night. So he replaced that part, showed me how to bypass the water softener in the future in case there’s another problem, and away he went.
Whew. Crisis averted. The joys of old-home ownership. LOL
Long story short (too late) to everyone who’s been worried about us because of the flooding, we’re fine. There’s still a few places around us where there’s standing water in the pastures and ditches, but we never had water in the house, and the septic tank’s back to fine working order.
And now we have a back-up toilet. LOL Which, seriously, if we ever have hours and hours of no power, since we have a well, a back-up toilet isn’t a bad thing to have on hand. LOL Or if we ever go camping or something, we have one. And I saved money on it. LOL Win! 🙂