The weather has been unseasonably warm and I’ve already lost several of my lettuces due to lack of water. They were under row covers and when last I looked at them they were doing fine. And even though it has rained each of the past several days it appears the accumulation has been minimal. (*Note to self – build rain gauge). Anyway, I carved out a block of time in my busy schedule to finally set up the water pump for my rain barrels. I got everything hooked up, plugged in the pump and … no water pressure. Huh?
First I checked the rain barrel spigot and discovered that the flow was weak. I removed the spigot and found that a leaf had partially blocked it. Now I was back in business. Started up the water pump again and …WTF … still no pressure! I thought maybe some creature had overwintered in the hose and that is was blocked, but before resorting to radical hose surgery, I connected a short piece of hose to the water pump just to make sure I was getting pressure. And wouldn’t you know, the pump is worn. More specifically, the impeller that moves water through the pump had broken and the pump motor was just spinning away doing nuthin’.
Now, without a working pump, I’m forced to water my east garden mostly by hand which is a thankless task to be sure. So I immediately jumped on the internet to search for a replacement impeller. Naturally the only place to get one is directly from Water Ace. Now Water Ace isn’t exactly on the cutting edge of the technology curve. Their website has no e-commerce facility, hell, it doesn’t even list my pump model or the parts I needed. So I resorted to calling them directly and found myself on hold because they were “experiencing unusually heavy call volume”. After about a 5 minute wait the phone rep came on and knew exactly what part I needed. That’s when I learned that these little plastic parts are expensive, $8.32 each expensive. Really? Considering that mine lasted only two seasons I imagine that they have themselves a tidy little replacement parts business going on. Anyway, I decided to order three of them because lord knows if these parts will continue to be available in coming years. The total out of pocket cost including shipping and tax was just north of $29.
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