Get yourself a 1500 gallon poly-tank and a trailer and fill it full of water. (the tank...not the trailer)
Fix yourself up all manner of fittings and valves coming out of said water tank so that the water goes into a pressure tank.
Then run pressurized water line out of pressure tank, thru the doggie door into the garage...
...through the garage into a hydrant in the wall of the garage...ok, so we had to remove the hydrant, and that is a long story in itself....
Start 'er all up and VOILA! Water in the house. The good kind.
Does that sound simple?? Oh yeah, you know it wasn't. Let me just tell you...
The water tank did not fit between the fenders of the trailer like it was supposed to. So it is loaded on the front and it is working, just not as planned. The water shut-off valve in the house needed to be replaced for our "new water system" to work. When the plumber (Tom) cut through the line, water started coming out like mad. When I walked into the room, the water was about 6 inches deep. (We do not have a basement--this is on the main floor of the house.) They used black electrical tape to seal it off until we could get the valve shut off in the yard.
Which brings me to the next issue--the valve in the yard can only be shut off by using a long T-shaped "wrench". Since we had packed everything up in the house and garage, as well as the shop, we had no idea where that wrench was. Finally found that and then we couldn't find the valves in the yard. We had 6 people out there poking around in the ground with wires trying to hit the valve caps that were just under the grass. (Imagine driving by our house at that moment....) We ended up having to get a metal detector. (Thank you, Corey, for finding a metal detector for us!)
Valves located and wrench located, we tried to shut the valve off and it was froze up. Yes, I'm serious--I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried! The man who put the valves in (back in 1994) said he's put valves like that in for years and has never ever seen one freeze up before. Of course.
I don't even know how they got the valve issue resolved, but somehow Tom was able to do what he needed to do in the house and they hooked up the lines through a hydrant in the garage...turned it on...and blew out the hydrant. Water, once again, spewing everywhere in that little room in the house....
Got that water stopped, pulled the hydrant out and replaced it with a straight line. Turned water on again and the first thing we replaced, the valve, started spewing water. Turned water off. Fixed valve.
Turned water back on....and it worked!! PHEW!!
Now I suppose one of my children will trip over that blue line in the garage tomorrow and pull everything apart. Because that is just how things apparently go around here!
But PRAISE GOD WE HAVE WATER. It had been less than 24 hours and I was already getting tired of flushing the toilet with a bucket.
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One other thing--I found this satellite image of the flooding and wanted to show you how God has really just protected our area. In the duplicate images below, the left one just shows the image, but the right one shows the image with our place marked by a red dot and an arrow. So when I say we have water on 3 sides of us, I'm serious. (click on it for larger view)
How amazing is that!!
oh my goodness!!! That could make an Oscar-winning movie! You tell it so humorously, but i know it's not at all funny! The flood-folk have been in my prayers - this has been quite an awful year for this weary world, but yes, God has given you a great measure of safety through all of this and praises are due for that.
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