When we bought our house back in 1999, we found that it used well water. I’d never heard of 20th century houses using wells until we moved to Grand Rapids but apparently it’s a thing.

We’d asked about hooking up the house to city water but it’s around 10k for most houses. Since we’ve got a corner lot, we’d get to pay 20k. I don’t understand that either.

On the Friday night before we flew out to San Antonio, we noticed that the pump for the well was running for a long time even though nothing was using water. Given my background with computers, I tried turning it off and on again. That seemed to shut it up but when we next used any water, the well’s pump turned on and didn’t stop.

I went down to reboot the pump, but just before I touched the switch, the pumping sound stopped and a mechanical clicking sound started. This made me more nervous than the never-stopping thing so I shut the thing off and resolved to call someone during the following day.

The following day, I asked Art if he could recommend anyone. He suggested the fine folks at Joe Carlson Well Drilling.

I called them up and they stopped by a few hours later.

They poked and prodded a few things and announced that the pump needed to be replaced. Unfortunately, the pump was at the far end of the 60 foot pipe – straight down.

The estimate was pricier than I’d’ve liked ($2,112) but it’s the only work that we’ve had done on the well so I’m counting ourselves lucky.

They were able to take care of it while we were out of town. When we got back, we had running water again.

We got the bill a couple of weeks later for $1,847 which is a better price but 2112 is a cooler number.