Woke Up to No Water This AM

TX-Dennis

TX-Dennis

Member
Bronze Supporter
Joined
Mar 30, 2014
Messages
4,917
Reaction score
12,957
Location
The Rugged Llano Estacado
Woke up at 4:30 this morning to shower and head in to work. Turned on the shower to let it warm up and . . . what? Tried the sink. Same results. Told my wife we have no water. She yells "You forgot to pay the water bill." No, that's not it. Besides they wouldn't shut it off in the middle of the night if that happened.

Evidently there is a break in a water main in an older part of the city. They tried to shut off the water to just that area to effect repairs, and the valve is old, so it broke too. Now they have shut off water to the entire city in order to make repairs. Supposed to be anywhere from 48 hours to twice that long without water.

The city has set up water distribution at three sites. Drive up and they will give you one case of bottled drinking water per vehicle. Better than nothing, I guess. On the neighborhood app and on facebook people with water wells are offering to fill bottles for anyone in their area who needs it. One even posted her address and said, "The spigot is next to the basketball goal by my driveway. Help yourself to as much as you need." I've seen others posting that they will deliver water bottles to anyone who can't get out.

One suggestion posted by a plumbing contractor was to turn off the power to your water heater and utilize the 40-80 gallons of clean water in your water heater through the drain valve. Makes sense.

We've got plenty of bottled water for drinking, and I bought some gallon jugs for flushing and some baby wipes. We should be okay, I guess. Planning a trip to a relative's house in a nearby city for some quick showers this evening. Of course, we're going to buy their dinner tonight.
 
Register to hide this ad
If you get the water out of your water heater via a the drain valve, I wouldn't drink that. Sediment settles at the bottom of a water heater.

It would be OK to use to flush the toilet, and it would get the sediment out of your water heater.

IF you do this, remember to make sure the tank is fully refilled before turning the power back on. Otherwise you will burn out the elements.

JMHO.
 
Well, since you brought up the subject, the same happened to me Sunday
night at 9:00. Grand daughter came into the living room and said, "papa
I tried to brush my teeth and only a little bit of water came out". Since
we live out in the boonies we have a well with a sand filter. My sand
filter reservoir is 3x4x5 feet there should be lots of cubic feet of water.
The intake pipe for the house is about 3 inches off the bottom and the
water level was down to about 8 inches. Water was coming in from the
upper end of the filter but it is a slow process, about a foot every 2 hours.
I shut off all power to the pump and went to bed. History has taught me
to keep about 10 gallons of water for such occasions.
I told the wife I will need to go to the hardware store early in the morn.
Good luck the next morning as I found the fittings I needed after turning
over everything in my shop and storage. After about an hour and a
minimal amount of blue language, I was back in the water.
Oh yeah, there is rural water about 2 miles from me but with maybe 3
new customers they will never lay a pipeline through this rock for that
distance.
 
My house is never out of water. I have two wells. One bored in 1981 with one of them new fangled electric pumps. (Of course when that one stops working, it is up to me to fix it.)

The other hand dug, 6 feet square. Dad cleaned it out to 55 feet deep when he bought the place in 1942. I drew a couple buckets up with the windlass yesterday. (Several households used it back when Hugo knocked the electric power out for about 10 days several years back.)

The reason for the bored well is that the hand dug one started getting pumped dry when dipers started getting washed a couple times per day in that automatic washing machine after the babies started showing up at the house I built in '76.
 
Just this spring summer the road through town is getting done. New water, sanitary and storm water lines. Road itself will be poured concrete. Had new gas lines last year in preparation. Took the opportunity to run new 1 in water lines to the house(s). The old water main had lead joints, and the old sanitary manholes did not have poured bottoms. Lived off a hose connected to house for several weeks. Being across the street from the historic County garage, would never drink any well water from property.

While people are inconvenienced, ya can't maintain or grow a town without utilities. Am now the old man watching the process, and it reminds me alot of when younger and a pipe layer/concrete finisher/dump driver.
 
We live on 5 acres and have a well pump. Three weeks ago my wife was in the middle of her evening shower and I was in the family room when she hollered at me that there was no water. Exactly two weeks prior I disconnected the electric power supply from the backup generator to the well pump, and instead, connected it to the newly installed front gate operators. I had to shut off the well pump disconnect and the circuit breaker to accomplish this. After testing the gate for proper function and setting the open and close limit switches I re closed the well pump disconnect. Long story short, I forgot to turn the well pump circuit breaker and it took 14 days to drain the 2500 gallon water tank. All this happened at about 10 PM, so by the time I realized what I had done, I then had to re-prime the system pressure pump which takes a bit of time to get all the air out. I find I have more senior moments than I can remember; and that folks, seems to be the root cause of my problem.
 
Update: the city utilities department says the break has been repaired. Now they are working on repressurizing the system which they say will take about 14 hours. Once pressure has been restored we will be under a boil water notice for 48 hours. So it looks like things are going more quickly than they originally estimated.
 
About 7 years ago lighting struck my well pump, 130 feet down the
well. Current somehow got past the circuit breakers and fried the
pump. With the help of a friend we pulled the pump and replaced it
with a 1/4 horse bigger pump. BTW always put a nylon rope on the
pump in case you have to pull it, prevents a pipe from breaking or
coming loose. Well is 140ft and water stands to within 25ft of the
top. It is a 2 man job to pull 130 feet of pipe with a pump hanging
on the end.
As the old saying goes, there is not anything full proof.
 
Well, water is back on, but not full pressure yet. That's a relief. No more filling toilet tanks from relatively expensive gallon jugs. We managed to only flush each toilet once during the outages - the yellow stuff just had to sit awhile, so we have a bunch of gallon jugs left over. It'll get used eventually.

When they said it could be 48 hours, then changed it to 72 and maybe longer I bought up what I figured I'd need for 3 days of flushing.

All in all our 165,000 or so residents were pretty well behaved and generous during the crisis. Lots of good people out here.

Last night in our neighboring city to the east every restaurant and fast food place was packed. Lots of folks made the 25 minute drive since the local places were all closed without water.
 
Last edited:
Most health clubs or gyms will let you have a one week free membership to try it out. I would shower there instead of driving out of town to a relatives house.
 
TX-Dennis said:
Well, water is back on, but not full pressure yet. That's a relief. No more filling toilet tanks from relatively expensive gallon jugs. We managed to only flush each toilet once during the outages - the yellow stuff just had to sit awhile, so we have a bunch of gallon jugs left over. It'll get used eventually.

When they said it could be 48 hours, then changed it to 72 and maybe longer I bought up what I figured I'd need for 3 days of flushing.

All in all our 165,000 or so residents were pretty well behaved and generous during the crisis. Lots of good people out here.

Last night in our neighboring city to the east every restaurant and fast food place was packed. Lots of folks made the 25 minute drive since the local places were all closed without water.
Click to expand...
Lucky it wasn't high school football season or those folks might
not have been so nice. Or has that changed the last 20 years?
 
CAJUNLAWYER said:
Can live with everything BUT the dry throne :eek: Gettin' too old for pooping in the back yard :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

About seven years ago we found ourselves with out water for two days while the city restored service. We had to improvise.

Since that time I have kept a box of kitchen trash bags, an empty mud bucket and a toilet seat in the basement.
 
Must have been the week for it. She gets up, hits the coffee, and goes out to feed her horses, while I drag myself out of bed.Monday she comes back in telling me there is no water. Last thing I did was fill the coffee maker before bed, so Im wondering whats up. Power is on and we have a generator. Checked all breakers even in the well house. Must be the pump.
Called the well guys at 0800, they called back in 5 minutes, be out some time in the morning. Oh well, put the horses out early since they have water tanks in their pens. Small automatic waterers in their stalls were dry. Guys got here about 1100 checked the pump controler power everything checked good. He reached under the control bow and hit a reset button wham everything starts running. They checked again said it looks good. BUT if it happens again and becomes frequent it means the pump is about to go out. Says its about a 4 hr job. They have to take part of the roof off the shed, no big deal , I did it partly before to insulate it, some screws. Truck with a winch pulls the pump its over 300 ft I think. Pump is almost 15 years old so thats life in the country. If it fails again I wont wait for it to go out. He also said it could work fine for years.
 
We experienced a “no water issue” Tuesday night. Our new home is equipped with a Moen-Flo water monitor and automatic shut off valve. It worked as designed for 4 months but went screwy Tuesday night. When I went for my 4am trip to the bathroom I noticed the water was off. A quick inspection of the valves indicator lights told me it had failed so I manually turned the valve back on and unplugged it. A call to Moen customer service yesterday confirmed that it was fried and they shipped me out a new one under warranty. Should have the new one plumbed in and working Friday. It was a strange feeling ( at 4 am) not having water for no apparent reason-like a storm or something.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

lihpster
Plumbing help Update: It's fixed!
Replies
14
Views
938
SMSgt
SMSgt
chief38
ANOTHER OCD PREP RECOMMENDATION - THIS TIME FOR POTABLE WATER
Replies
16
Views
1K
mtgianni
M
LVSteve
North Texas growth pains
2
Replies
34
Views
1K
bobsguns
bobsguns
lihpster
Now I'm doing construction work for critters?
2
Replies
24
Views
2K
CALREB
CALREB
I
Pending demise or pending doom?
2 3 4
Replies
76
Views
4K
oldbrownhat
oldbrownhat

Latest posts

Back
Top