Ever heard the saying, “It’s colder than a well driller’s a**”? I’ve often wondered why their backsides would be especially cold, or how the saying came about. We got a chance to explore this myth last week.
Our well is 40+ years old and to my knowledge is the oldest on Red Mountain. Over time wells develop mineral deposits and scale which clogs the porous walls of the well and diminish the water refill rate. Around here we also get iron and magnesium bacteria which clog the pump. We treat the bacteria with 35% Hydrogen Peroxide which does a pretty decent job of knocking the stuff back. For scale, we use Sulfamic Acid pellets.
I threw the Sulfamic Acid pellets down the well and waited a few hours for our well to go from “trickle” to “deluge”. All we got was “disappointment.”
Being without water on a farm is probably one of the most stressful experiences life will throw at you. The only upside to well failure is that I got to drive and operate my brother’s boom truck which is something straight out of Mad Max. Driving that thing makes bus-driving look like driving a 4-door sedan.
We are fortunate to have awesome staff who could take over all aspects of the tours while Jeff and I worked on the well. Our mantra for the next few days was, “we just have to NOT fight.” High stress, dangerous work, two strong-willed and stubborn personalities — it really was the perfect storm. Would we make it to our 9th anniversary? That was the other question we needed to answer, besides how cold are well-driller butts and why?
I ran the boom, Jeff uncoupled the pipe as it came up. I count it as a great success that we extracted the entire 420 feet of pipe and the pump without any drama. People even came by to observe and left disappointed with the lack of flying pipe wrenches and creative swearing. We’ll try to do better. We have other projects upcoming which we will endeavor to inject with blind rage. Observers are encouraged to bring hard hats and popcorn.
In the end, we learned that galvanized steel and stainless steel react and corrode, and that various acids will accelerate that corrosion. I’d swear we Googled that before we connected the stainless steel pump to the galvanized pipe, but there we were with a big ol’ hole in our pipe and Google reinforcing what we’d just observed.
In the well business, this is called “a bad thing”.
What some might take to be bad news struck us as so lucky that we bought lottery tickets. Of all the things we envisioned, of the thousands of dollars we calculated in our minds that we’d have to spend to fix the well, it turned out it cost us $20 in parts and $100 in fuel.
THAT is our kind of luck.
Back down the hole with the pipe and pump and cable and … this is where our good natures deteriorated. I wanted to test the pump before hooking it up to the pressure gauge and everything, Jeff wanted to hook it all up first. Personal flaws unrelated to the task at hand were introduced to the discussion, as well as some sweeping accusations (and frankly, utter lies!). There we were, at the pinnacle of success, hell-bent on self-defeat. There’s a life-lesson in there, I’m sure.
I’d love to say it was the influence of my persuasive nature and well-formed arguments that ultimately turned the tables. More likely Jeff thought, “whatever it takes to shut her up.”
Every anniversary has a “thing” — paper, cotton, linen. Our 9th anniversary was supposed to be the Pottery anniversary but we were happy to give each other water. Also, we discovered after the fact that we’ve been celebrating our anniversary on the wrong day for years now.
Oops.
And yet, we remain married.
We are slowly getting things back to some shade of green, little by little. Today we’ll return Mad Max to my brother and hopefully the next time I drive it will be strictly for funsies.
Also, we experienced no extraordinary cooling of the backside or hint of any kind as to why well drillers have cold butts or even if they DO have cold butts at all.
Now, I need to go wash some dishes…
