The Plumber Never Rings Twice

OK, are you sitting down? Good. The plumber arrived on time to fix our water system! I know; he was to be here at 9 and at 8:50 the door bell rang. "Hello, I am Mr. Maire (Ma-ear-ray) the plumber". A very nice gentleman he went right to work on our problem. He tried all the faucets and looked over the piping on the outside and then called in the reserves. Another fellow arrived on a small motor bike with his toolkit strapped to the back. They realized that something was clogging the pipes and started to remove valve stems in hopes of finding the clog up here in the apartment. An hour later, we heard the clamor of the ladder coming up the stairs as they assistant opened the hatch to the roof. Most of the water systems here have a storage tank up high were the water is kept until needed. That provides a good pressure for use when the municipal system doesn't really work. Here is Mr. Maire looking over the maze of pipes and tanks on the roof.

By 11 AM they had the entire water system torn apart and still no pressure. They finally diagnosed the problem to be in the pipe leading from the water meter to the roof tank and were able to flush that our. I suspect there is a check valve in there that clogged or failed from the crud in the pipe. They are putting new water mains throughout the neighborhood and we have slightly brown water as the new pipes are put in service. By noon everything was back together and we had water. The only interesting part was when the plumber asked "do you have a pliers?". I guess when you come on a little motorbike your tool choices are limited.

Caleb and I worked on more screens at the Stiles. Everyone had some time to read and work on school work and it was an enjoyable day. Sharon asked Caleb to take some pictures from the top of the apartment and here is our view out the kitchen.

This will be hard to leave.

In the afternoon we headed to the farm for volleyball and soccer. Annica took me over to the milking house to watch the cows come in for their evening milking. They milkd by hand in a barn with about 30 stalls and it is a busy place. Along the way we watched the farm hands move cattle and sheep to new grazing areas and saw a herd of goats with many little ones just trying to keep up with their mothers.

The Stiles kids are getting very good at organizing soccer games with a very diverse group of kids (some know how to play soccer and some are really good at it). Soon we had a serious international game going with the only impediment to play 3 dogs sleeping in the middle of the pitch (soccer field). The dogs got bumped by the ball and people, would stand up and stretch and then lay down somewhere else in the field of play. This went on until dusk and we returned home. Many of the people who come to the farm are headed off for the holidays so we wanted one last time to say goodbye to this group.

We did find apartment C-1 open and the tenants sweeping out the water as we arrived back here. They appeared to have very nice stuff and hopefully they could rescue most of the rugs and anything else on the floor. One of the folks at the farm said she always has a wet/dry vacuum cleaner because flooding is not unusual. With storage tanks and pipes in the ceilings and torrential rains it is not uncommon to have to dry out the house. That was our Saturday. Sunday Dale goes north to preach one last time at a village church. I don't think Sharon and I are going as it makes for a very long day with a couple of hours of bumpy road each way. We love Dale's preaching and will get more when we return home.