The other night after a long day working in my garden, I started filling the bathtub and got in, eager to relax. Not so fast. I watched as the stream trickled to a drip, and then nothing. Oh the joy of living on a spring.

All of a sudden we had no water. Not in the bath, not in the sinks, and not in the toilets.

Either a downstream line had busted somewhere and drained the tank, or the input line had a problem, or the spring itself had gone dry (the worst-case scenario). It was already 8pm, so the only thing to be done was wait until morning and go see what had happened.

It takes 45 minutes to an hour to get to the tank by ATV, or about 30 minutes walking up the mountain to it directly. If there’s anything to carry, like tools, it’s much better to take the long way around.

Getting things fixed

It’s always a DIY project when you live in the Ozarks outback, otherwise you’ll have to spend a LOT to get someone out to do repairs for you. Honestly, I don’t know of anyone that will come out and hike a mountain or take an ATV to a site to do repairs.

Living on a spring is only one of the systems that occasionally fail and needs repair on a homestead.

We live six miles from pavement and an hour and a half from any of the larger towns like Fayetteville. There are some plumbers in Huntsville, which is about an hour away, but most plumbers don’t work on jobs like this. There are a few townsfolk who do, but they’re always busy on other jobs.

So knowing basic homestead maintenance skills is a necessity.

Here’s a post about the lead-up to the investigation:

https://www.wildozark.com/relaxing-bath

Here’s the longer post with photos and a link the video below about the fix: https://www.wildozark.com/water-line-repair-day/

And here’s the short video that shows the fix:

And, here’s a link to the topic of self-reliance on my main blog: https://www.wildozark.com/departures/homestead/self-reliance/