May 21-May 25

May 21
   Monday morning we woke up in our trailer at Paul and Di's, had a quick breakfast and started packing up to head home. Paul was pretty happy to have spent the weekend doing what he loves but we could see he was pretty tired from it all. Over the weekend the water pressure in their house had been doing weird things and they had determined that the water system pressure tank was to blame. He was going to make a few calls in the afternoon to try to line up a new one for the next day. Of course they had to head back in to Edmonton for his treatments so Dave and Paul's brother, Louis (a plumber), made plans to install the new tank on Tuesday. 
    Bonnyville has been suffering from a tent caterpillar infestation for the last  four years and unfortunately they have returned for year five.

Last years infestation at Pauls

Also last year, these poplars should be in full leaf but caterpillars eat the leaves

They were just starting up at Paul and Di's so we stopped in town on our way home at the RV wash and gave the rig a full spray down so we wouldn't transport any nasty critters to our place. We get them too but not nearly as many and I would like to keep it that way! As luck would have it we also had our first big thunderstorm of the season that afternoon.

Love Alberta thunderstorms!

Lots of rain and even a bit of hail.

The only problem with thunderstorms is they only hit random areas with much needed rain. Most of northern Alberta is very dry and there are many fires burning. The rain was appreciated in our area but the lightening likely started as many fires as the rain put out.

May 22

   Woke up early to a beautiful, sunny, warm day. Dave headed out for a run while Margaret and I did a walk. I took her for about 2 km and then continued on myself for another 3.5 km. After some quick showers Dave headed back to Paul and Di's to help install the pressure tank while I sat down to do another blog post. I'll let Dave fill you in on the tank install...

  Thankfully I am meeting with Paul's brother Louis at Paul's place. Louis is a plumber and that's great because the install had some quirks! I got there first and depressured and drained the water system for us to take it apart. Quick explanation of the system for some that might not know about an acreage system. Paul has a 5000 gallon cistern buried outside, a truck fills the cistern and there is a submersible pump that delivers water pressure to the house. A pressure switch inside controls where the pump starts/stops and the pressure tank acts as a buffer to maintain steady pressure in the house so that you don't have your tap water pressure going up and down. The sign that the pressure tank failed was the tap in the kitchen "surging" with the pump pressure, hence the new pressure tank.

Paul had already picked up a new pressure tank and had set it in the basement for us. They headed to Edmonton shortly after I got there for more treatments for Paul. I had just started taking things apart when Louis arrived so we brought in a bunch of tools from his truck that we might need. (he had a lot of tools in his truck!) Louis got the old tank disconnected and was removing the wires for the switch when suddenly the wires arced and he jumped, what the?? We both checked that the power was off to the system and, yes, I had the right breaker turned off, so why the heck did it have power?? He carefully taped the wires so they wouldn't spark and we continued replacing the pressure tank. Louis got the new tank in place pretty quick and reinstalled the switch, carefully of course, and we were ready to pressurize the system. Great! Nope, not great, the pump is not starting? No pressure? Hmmm, Louis knows how the circuit works and luckily I know where Paul's tools are so we grabbed a multimeter to look for power. To make a long story short... we had power everywhere at 110 volts, that should work unless it's a 220 volt pump. No, there's only one breaker marked "pressure system" so it has to be 110 volts. We checked a bunch of places for power and I decided to "call a friend" my buddy Ron Charawich who is an electrician and has been for 25+ years, he'll know. Well as luck would have it Ron was at home and not doing much at that time and volunteered to come out and have a look. When he got there I basically introduced him and Louis and moved out of the way. Two trades guys and an operator, I'll wait back here! It didn't take very long and they had the answer, 1) there was another breaker involved that was mislabelled 2) the old pressure switch is failed which may have been the problem before, hard to say. We got it changed out with a temporary switch, as the supplier could not get the correct one until tomorrow morning, and had water running right afterwards. Ahhh I know where Paul keeps cold beer too, thanks buddy, cheers! And thanks to Ron and Louis for their work, I doubt that I could have done this myself.  Back to Leslie.

    So I had been expecting Dave home around 1 pm but with all the issues he was gone until after 5 pm. I took full advantage to actually sit down and catch up on some PVR'ed episodes of The Handmaids Tale. I love this series and Dave does not. I actually felt a bit guilty for taking an entire afternoon off but I got over it! lol

May 23

  Wednesday Dave had to go pick up the correct switch and headed out to Paul and Di's once again to replace the temporary one. Big thanks to Trademark Plumbing in Bonnyville, owners Marcel and his son Chad know the trouble Paul is having and they gave us the parts free! That's awesome! We are heading back out to Pineridge so I went in to town to the grocery, pharmacy, post office and liquor store. I got home and started packing up the trailer.  It was a super hot 29C day. Too hot for my liking but things need to get done for Dave to head out tomorrow. Dave got home and we finished packing and started mowing the lawn. Another long day! After supper we headed downstairs to watch the  two hour, season finale of Survivor. At 10 pm we headed upstairs for bed. Oh crap! There are multiple texts on both our phones from Di's Mom, Denise. She had gone over to water plants and had no water. WTF! We had a very busy day planned tomorrow so we jumped in the truck and headed back out to see what we could do. Dave went down to the utility room and I ran from the kitchen on the main level up to the master ensuite on the second floor trying taps as required. It didn't make sense that with a brand new tank and a new switch that there was only good pressure in the basement, adequate on the main floor and almost none on the second floor. By now it was almost midnight and we could not think straight. Time to head home and tackle it again in the morning.  The house was still super hot so we fired up the AC in the trailer and slept in there :)

May 24

   After a good night sleep and a few minutes to think things through we realized it was definitely the air pressure on the new pressure tank that was causing the issues. A quick google consult and a call to Chad at Trademark confirmed it. Dave had a brunch organized with Jack and Steve (a couple of retired co-workers). A quick detour on his way to the restaurant to lower the air pressure on top of the tank bladder and he had the water system working at 100%. He had a great brunch with the guys. It's so nice to catch up with the guys you haven't seen for a while. I got all the final fridge items and toiletries loaded in the trailer. When Dave got home he basically got on the road to Pineridge and I got in my car to head to Cold Lake for a bone densitometry test. I am staying home tonight and driving the Mustang to Pineridge in the morning.

May 25

   Kinda weird waking up all alone. I can't remember the last time I didn't at least have a dog with me. After a bowl of cereal and a coffee I made sure the house was clean and ran a quick vaccuum hoping that we might have a showing while we are away. I did a short walk to loosen up my back and hit the road to Wabamun Lake. Just before getting to Smoky Lake I ducked as a fairly large rock hit my windshield.

Ggggggrrrrrr!

I stopped and grabbed a bite and got back on the road. I called Dave and told him about my windshield so he started calling glass places along my route to try to get if fixed asap. We found a Crystal Glass in Stony Plain that could fit me in. I dropped off my car when I got there and opted to go for a walk until they could get to it. The fellows there would offer no guarantee as the chip was quite large and very deep so we will see how it holds up. A side note: doing a 40 minute walk in flip flops makes your feet hurt! lol. The rest of the day we just worked on the lot and some cleanup/ organizing here at Pineridge. We have a real early start tomorrow to go to an Ultramarathon at Cooking Lake east of Edmonton. Our buddy Ailsa is running a 50 mile race to tune up for the 100 mile race in Lake Tahoe June 23rd. Yeah she's a special kind of crazy! More on that next blog.