Dorothy and I were out walking (Our Dutch Shepherd) at the cabin the other day and happened to go past our water junction box. As many of you know we receive our drinking water from an artisan well up the mountain via 1,200 feet of 3/4" poly pipe. Yes gravity is a wonderful and free thing.
During the winter months we leave open the valve in the junction box so the line doesn't freeze. The water runs off into a dry crick bed and runs down hill to a larger crick and then off to a river. As Dorothy and I walked past the water junction box I did not hear the familiar gurgling of water running through the box at 6 or so gallons per minute.
Upon further investigation I discovered that the water pipe had blown at one of the ball valves. "Well that sucks" I muttered to myself. This could mean no water to the cabin till April if the whole line was frozen.
This has happened before but it usually nothing more than an inconvenience as I have a safety "blow by system" which disengages the hose from the part of the hose that has frozen. Once this happens it is just a simple, be it week long process, of deicing this length of pipe. In short the blow by switch didn't work. Yup, as we followed the line up to the well the entire hose, all 1,200 feet was frozen!
With dark quickly falling and dinner to make, I put off figuring out the extent of the damage and coming up with a solution to the problem till the next day.
The next day Dorothy (She ran around like a crazy dog chasing squirrels and trying to dig up mice) and I unhooked four, 400 foot hanks of poly pipe. Then dragging them down the mountain to an open field that faced and slanted towards the south. The goal was for the black poly pipe to absorb some of the suns rays during this coming's weeks warmer sunny weather and hopefully melt the logjam of ice.
With that chore done I went back to the water junction box to take apart the frozzen split section of pipe connected to the ball valve. To my surprise I found out what had caused the drama to occur.
There was a left foreleg of a frog nicely frozen right against the ball valve. The frog leg must have caused just enough resistance to slow the flow of water causing the pipe to freeze. Then of course with no water flowing the whole 1,200 feet of pipe froze in the 0 -10 degree F cold spell we were having. But, why did my blow by system fail and how did a frog leg get past the foot valve/strainer I have on the end of the hose I asked myself. Mmmmmm?
It dawned on me as funny that the foot valve at the pick-up end of the pipe was not on when I started to pull the first 400 feet of pipe down the mountain. I just figured it came off somewhere along the trail.
I trekked back up the mountain to the well, lifted the roof over the well and down at the bottom gleaming in the dark sediment was the foot valve/strainer. O-Kay I got it. I surmised that an unsuspecting frog had swam past the end of the uncovered pipe and his/her forearm got a bit to close to the exposed pipe end. But why did my blow by system fail? The answer to that question came from Karen later.
Once I told Karen of the frog, foot valve mishap and what Dorothy and I had done most of the afternoon, she remembered something that my brother had told her concerning the water line back in December. In short, he was concerned that the connection of where two of the pipes joined each other was not secured with hose clamps. So he added two hose clamps which defeated the whole blow by system that had worked great for winters or so.
I laughed at this and thought of what an old employee use to say to me at the West Marine store I managed in Marina del Rey CA. "No good deed goes unpunished!"
Anybody up for frog's leg tonight? It's fresh.
