01/09/10

I'm back! Christmas vacation was great. I was happy to be home to see my family, friends, and of course Lindsey. I also worked while I was home which was a blessing considering how expensive Chicago can be. I think they are about to start charging people to breathe. I'd pay for that as long as they could keep it warm all year.

Well, while I was gone, the boat arrived which had our food orders from Sam's and Wal-Mart. I am happy because we were starting to get low on food. I don't mean that we were going to starve or anything, but just that we were running out of choices. Another thing that came on the boat is an air tank for our water pump.

I don't remember if I wrote about this last quarter, but we were having problems with our water. As you may know, we have a reservoir in the back and the only way to get any water pressure is to pump it into the house. It's an above ground reservoir, so as long as it is full gravity will pull it into our toilet. However, without power, we won't get any water for showers or for our sinks. So, we have to fill up a bucket and use a cup to pour water over our head in the shower. It's really not all that bad. In any case, I don't want our pump to burn up so I was concerned when it was running strangely last semester.

I had gone out back as it was making a strange sound. The problem was that it needs to pump water into what I refer to as the air tank. This tank has a bladder (like an inner tube) which when full of air gets compressed and pushes back on the water therefore creating pressure in our water lines. If the bladder cracks and fills with water (as ours did because it is old and rusty) it doesn't work properly. Ours wasn't too bad as I could fill it with air but it wouldn't hold for much more than a couple weeks. So, that's just what I did until we could get a new one.

One the boat arrived, John asked if I was going to hook it up. I told him I would like to help, but didn't know enough about it to try it on my own. He said that he would have Ermilien, one of the workers here, help me with it on Saturday.

So, today, I was going to have him help me change our air tank for the water pump. I couldn't find him so I needed to add air to the tank so it'll hold over until we can put the new one on. Well, you see, nothing goes quickly here. To do that, we have a little portable compressed air tank, however, you need to fill it up first as it isn't a small compressor unit, but just a small tank to transport compressed air. So, I grabbed it and went over to the compressor. The compressor's on/off switch was broken. It must have happened over break as it was fine before I left. The cover to the switch was off and noticed that there are a bunch of wires inside. The way it connects is a little strange, but fortunately, I was able to take the broken handle, and wedge it in a little spot to keep it switched on. I then plugged it in and filled my tank. As I was filling the tank I noticed it had a leak. There is a plastic connection (I don't know why it isn't metal) to the tank which was cracked. That wasn't like that before break either! So, I filled it as best I could (I didn't want to over fill it and then have it blow up in my face), and then hurried over to my place as it was leaking air. Fortunately, it didn't all escape and I got there just in time to squeeze a little air into our tank. Not ideal, but enough to get us by. It's funny sometimes as we often have to improvise here on such short notice. It does make for an interesting place to live!