We’ve had quite a spring, summer and fall with our water system at the desert house. It all started when I was looking at the back yard with our security camera and noted that the grass seemed to be turning brown. There are occasional issues with the irrigation valves, so I made plans to drive out on Friday to see about fixing it. When I got to the house, I went to wash my hands and noticed that there was no water pressure. Time to investigate.

When I got to the pump house, I noticed that there was a strange humming coming from the booster pump. It was warm, humming, and not pumping. I powered on and off, no change. I called our friendly plumber. We deduced that the pump had seized up for some reason and needed to be replaced. I locked everything up and headed home.

I found the correct model pump online and had it shipped up to Anza. By the next weekend, we had water again. Dennis, the plumber, noted that there was a broken pipe in the back yard. They had the pump in place but pressure wasn’t building and it took them a while to find the break out by the back yard wall. The pieces of the mystery were coming together.

We have someone mow the lawn and property which keeps me from spending all of my time on maintenance work. He apparently ran over the pipe with his riding mower. I have done so in the past. But he then went and shut off the water at the storage tanks. This made the booster pump run dry and seize up. At least we now knew the cause.

The weekend after the repair, we came out and I checked out all the irrigation. Apparently the swap out of the pump put some sediment into the water system so several emitters needed replacing and the mesh filter in the irrigation pipe connectors all needed to be cleaned.

On Sunday, I was walking by the orchard and noticed that the water was running. It should not have been. The valve was off at the controller. Another crisis: I couldn’t have the water running constantly but I couldn’t just shut it off. The valve for the irrigation in the orchard was in a box in the ground. Squirrels and gophers had helpfully filled it with dirt. So I had to dig out about two yards of dirt to get to the valve.

I was able to get the water to stop, but not able to get the valve to function properly. I noted that there were screws on the top of valve — apparently this was user-serviceable. I disassembled and cleaned the valve. When it was back together again, it worked fine. Success!

A month or two later, I got a call from our yard guy. Apparently the backyard pipe had busted again. When he went to turn off the water (yes, I told him how after the last disaster) he found the pump room flooded and water spouting out of a leak in the pipe. I thanked him for letting me know and immediately drove the 124 miles out to the desert house from Los Angeles.

Indeed there was a major leak and a major flood. It had been running for weeks. There was moss growing outside of the pump room. Time to stop the water and clean things up. I finally got the pressure down so the leak stopped by shutting the water off at the storage tanks. The shop vac got the water most out. Four cinder blocks held the doors open so the pump room would dry out. And Dennis would be out the next day to do repairs.

A fitting on the new pump was defective. It sprung a leak. If we’d been here we would have noticed it pretty soon, but with lockdowns and painting being done at the Los Angeles house, we haven’t been coming out to the desert very often. But again, things were fixed and mostly working properly. One rotary sprinkler in the back yard wasn’t working, but I said to hell with that.

Fast forward to November. We had to go to Anacortes for my father-in-law’s funeral. I asked Dennis to stop by the house and shut off the water. It was getting into the 20s at night and I didn’t want anything freezing. Dennis came out and shut things off just before Thanksgiving.

On the Thursday after Thanksgiving, I was checking out the backyard through the security cameras and I noticed that one of the sprinklers seemed to be running. This was very odd. So Friday I left after a few morning calls and came out. Sure enough, several of the valves for the backyard were open and water was slowly flowing out. I shut off the valve at the backyard, solving the immediate problem.

Dennis had left the valves in the pump room open and shut off power to the booster pump. Whatever valve glitch caused the valves in the backyard to open allowed water to flow from the storage tanks to the sprinklers. Thankfully, he had left the well pump on so that the storage tanks didn’t drain. With things turned on I proceeded to winterize all the irrigation, draining the pipes through the hose bibs.

I spent the rest of the day dusting and vacuuming the house. I had a nice dinner and a good sleep. I took off the next morning with everything working for now.

So far it has stayed that way. Fingers crossed.