Little Birdie

My husband and I own rental properties. It’s been quite an adventure–fun at times; other times…not so much.

Take yesterday for example. I get a frantic call from a tenant: “Hey Miss Kathy, is there something wrong with our well pump or something?”

Oh. Man. Take it from me; as a landlord, you NEVER want to get that call. In the words of Short Round, “hang on lady, we going for a ride.”

The result? 245 feet of pipe, $300 worth of well pump, 10 hours, and 5 very, very wet people.

Who digs a well TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE FEET DEEP?!? Do you have any idea how much 245 feet of pipe and a stainless steel pump full of water weighs? (…let’s see, pi r squared times what now?) We don’t, but it’s way more than we can lift. In fact, three grown men had trouble lifting it. Due to the ingenuity of the previous owner, there was no guide rope, so they had to pull the well up by the pipe, which was also shitty grade (I believe that’s actually the industry term).

The pipe snapped three times on the way up. The last time, the whole rig went crashing back down to the bottom of the well at LUDICROUS SPEED, wreaking destruction on everything in its path. It was a true Wile E. Coyote moment. You know, like the one where he’s got some elaborate snare rigged up and the Road Runner zips through it, and the the Coyote steps right in it to see what’s wrong, and next thing you know he’s been wapped on the pavement two or three times. That was us, except the snare was well pump wire and gravity was our worst enemy. I bet Isaac Newton had a grand laugh at our expense last night.

I had to hand it to my husband though. He stuck it out. Drenched from head to toe (once courtesy of Mother Nature, once because of a faulty PVC joint), sick as a dog, he kept working until our poor tenants had water again. I was so proud of him. And the tenants were great. They kept it light, laughing and joking around despite the late hour and busted well.

So, rule #32 of rental properties: Never buy a property whose well is deeper than the house is long.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under my life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.