Water...

A necessity? Something that mysteriously but automatically comes from your tap?? But where does it come from? In our house its not that easy...

We haul water... We have a 12 foot trailer that carries a 900 gallon water tank. It takes three loads to fill our two 1700 gallon water tanks. (Because they usually aren't quite empty when he hauls water.)

That water sits in these cisterns (one in our basement and one in a shack inside our garage) and then it is pumped to the taps through a water pump in our basement.

The years of water hauling has been trying... When we moved here we had a 120 gallon tank that we had to put in our minivan and haul with. It took 9 trips to fill our then 1000 gallon cistern. That was awful..

It was gravity fed into the basement and sometimes had to be bailed... Not so nice..

Then with our home burning down we were in rebuild mode and decided to go big with water storage for our big family, only those tanks were a little big for the basement. So the decision was made (all be it an uneducated one) to leave one tank in the basement then put the house on (it was moved in) and we would build something for the other tank.

The first two years with this system..... we had a gas pump to feed the water from the hauling tank to the cisterns. Gravity feeding didn't work for our upper tank and we would have to haul over a period of days with gravity feeding.

We thought this was great... Until it got cold.... winter + gas pump = NO WORKY.... water freezes rather fast at -30 and unfortunately it doesn't warm up so mama can haul water.... Tears freeze really fast too just so you know.... I poured countless loads of precious water on the ground because I couldn't get that pump running....

This past year my loving and tired of hearing about it husband put in an electric pump much like the one we have in our basement, to replace the gas one.... He was adored for days.. and it has gone off without a hitch since.... until yesterday....

Remember the children crashing into the garage door and now it isn't closing..... well apparently they crashed into the sensor that works the electric opener... the dog got it... chewed it up and now its gone.... OK... fine so we need to fix the door....

Cats are cold in the barn and since the garage door is open then its fair game so they move in to the garage and they take up shop atop said watershed...... now we were in a hurry when we built it... it has only strapping and plastic on the roof... atop that there is insulation.....

See where I'm going with this???

So the mouse eating fat kitties implode the roof.... the heater in there cant compete with the great outdoors so all the hoses freeze solid..... GREAT!

It took about an hour of mum and I taking turns getting soaked to figure out which hose it was... then we suspended ourselves over the top held the hose up above our heads and poured boiling water fresh from the kettle down the hose....

BRILLIANT ....... RIGHT!?!

Not so much..... eventually we figured out this wouldn't work......

We removed the hose and put it in the bathtub with piping hot water.....

BRILLIANT ...... RIGHT!?!

YES!!!!

Nathan climbed behind the tank put the hose back in and we were in business....

It took us three hours to put the water from one tank into the other......

hmmmm.... spring is coming I can feel it..... let me tell you it cant come soon enough!!!

 The lonely water tank.... not even sure how to get it attached to the truck.... Thankfully Mr.Rigger is much more inventive that I.......

I dream of this scene...... soon... i must have patience...... yes..... it will come.........