The Joys of Plumbing

Flower seemed to be in good spirits when we soaked her foot last night. The infection is already starting to drain. My plan is to soak her foot every day this week. I know the vet said we could do it every other day but I’d rather not take any chances. The weather is supposed to turn next week so we may do the every other day soaking treatment then. But for now, I want to make sure that we do everything possible to help Flower. She’s such an easy patient. She’s definitely not out of the woods by any means but we did see her putting a little bit more weight on the foot yesterday when we got home from the paying jobs. I was hoping she’d lie down for a little while to take the pressure off all her legs but I can’t tell now if she is resting or not. I gave her bute this morning to see if that would help any. We’ll soak her foot tonight after I get home from picking up more vet wrap and gauze. I guess I’m going to stockpile the vet wrap just for Flower. Luckily I had two from some other injury from a long time ago (long enough for me to forget who it was and the stress we went through).

I think I’ve recovered from our water issue this weekend and thought I’d share. I can laugh about it now but at the time I was not happy (nor was I happy writing a big, unexpected check to the plumber). It’s sort of horse related, sort of not but it was a definite lesson learned on my part.

On Sunday, Mom, Dad, and Grandma came down to help around the place. We had a few inside projects to tackle including some plumbing issues. Luckily we are on rural water instead of well water. I grew up on well water and miss it but don’t miss all the water issues that come with it. Unfortunately, how the water is set up is messed up. All the water has to run through the house before heading to the outside (keep that in mind).

Because we moved in to an old farmhouse, the plumbing isn’t the greatest. We’ve always meant to tackle the bathroom plumbing and thought we would do a quick “home improvement” by switching out a faucet. Simple right? Just a few minutes of the water shut off (everywhere…including the outside water to the horses) and then presto we have a new bathroom faucet and water back on. A big fat wrong!! Because we are in an old farmhouse, the original pipes are cast iron (our long term goal is to replace all the cast iron when we can save back enough money). In the process of taking off the old faucet, the cast iron pipe disintegrated. No problem right? Just put a new pipe in and call it good so we can get the water back on right? Wrong. We didn’t have the right pipes, connectors, and whatever else that’s needed to replace the disintegrated pipe. We were in trouble. We were pretty much stuck.

When I say “stuck”, I mean we had to call a plumber to fix the issue. I’m no plumber so I wasn’t any help through the entire ordeal. But it also meant that we were without water both in the house and outside as there’s no valve that allows water to go to the outside faucets and water troughs. Now, you wouldn’t think much of it if it was summer. But it’s February. February, with cold-ish temps, and an automatic waterer that can’t pull water. Yup, you guessed it. The herd of 10 horses, the ponies, and Flower would be without water if we didn’t scramble and “improvise”. Luckily the mare pasture and the blind pen had 100 gallon water troughs that were nearly full but the automatic waterer was the biggest concern. If the herd drank the water down, the heating element would burn up and it would be yet another expense we hadn’t budgeted for.

Thank god for neighbors!! We loaded a 150 gallon tote into the back of the truck and headed to town to get water. We also had a spare 110 gallon water trough I typically use in the summer. I got everything set up while Mike went to fill the tote. I had to go in search of pallets because Chaos decided he was going to claim the water trough for himself. He ended up getting both front feet into it. I figured he was going to break the darn thing at one point. So up the water trough went onto two pallets so Chaos couldn’t get his grubby hooves into the tank. But wait, you remember, it’s February. How is the water going to stay open in the 110 gallon water trough without a heater? Luckily we had a spare. In my wisdom (or blind luck) I had picked up an extra heater. Unfortunately it has a bigger heater than our lines could take. We could either run the heater or keep the yard light on. So, off goes the yard light and we finished doing chores in the dark.

But it gets better! You think I forgot about the automatic water right? Nope. Because we didn’t want to turn the heater off and have everything freeze, we had to cover it. Mike went out originally with duct tape and a plastic bag but the bag didn’t survive for more than about an hour. I expect Maverick had something to do with that. So instead, Mike went back out to the automatic waterer and put duct tape all over it. The duct tape didn’t stop the horses from drinking a little but it was easier for them to drink out of the 110 gallon tank. We unloaded the 150 gallon tote into the tank and then made sure everyone else had their water buckets topped off with a few extra buckets to take to the house for the morning.

These are the times I wish our outhouse was functional. Because it was Sunday late afternoon, no plumber is willing to come out. Mike did find a fairly local plumber that was willing to come out first thing Monday morning. By the time we got done with chores, and drill practice pictures I was ready for bed but headed to Mom and Dad’s. I decided that I didn’t want to be without water. I also wanted to be in Madison Monday to pick up medicine for Flower.

By the time I got home Monday afternoon, the water was back on and I had not only a new bathroom faucet but a new bathroom sink (something we’d bought a long time ago but needed a plumber to install thanks to the plumbing issues we knew we were going to face).

Least to say there were a few lessons learned during this experience. First and foremost, never start a plumbing project Sunday late afternoon. As the plumber said, if you’re going to start on a plumbing project, start either Friday night or first thing Saturday morning. My lesson learned, never start a plumbing project in the middle of winter!