Preppers: A Lesson In The Little Things
Kevin Felts 01.31.18
The past week has been pretty miserable. Going to SHOT Show for three days was pretty awesome. Meeting new people, shooting, and seeing new products was amazing.
However, all good things must come to an end. As soon as I arrived home the problems started. I flew home Thursday, and drove up to the house around midnight. Friday I was checking on some things outside the house and noticed the water pump was making a grinding sound.
I told my wife something like, “Sounds like the water pump is going out, let’s order one off Amazon.” Amazon Prime is a wonderful thing for people who live in a rural area.
Do you think the pump lasted until we could get another one? Nope. Saturday morning I got up, went to brush my teeth, and there was no water.
On top of the water pump, I came down with a cold Friday. So not only was I feeling like crude, but the water pump was out. After calling around and visiting several stores, we found a replacement pump in Jasper, Texas. We got home, went to put the pump on, and I needed some PVC fittings. The replacement pump is different than the old pump.
In the storage room is a box full of PVC fittings, and some PVC glue. Rather than buying one part, I buy a bag of 10. Of course the parts I needed had already been used.
Back to the store we went. Before we left, looked for PVC glue and I had one container of it. My wife and I went to a hardware store, got the fittings, and went home.
Upon arriving at home, I got the glue out, went to glue the parts together, and the glue had dried out.
All this happened on Saturday.
It was too late in the evening to go back to the store, so we used creek water to flush the toilets and for drinking water. The creek water was ran through a Royal Berkey to make it safe to drink.
Sunday afternoon we went back to the hardware store, got some glue, and was finally able to get the pump put back on.
What should have taken just an hour, turned into a two day project. Why was that? Because I thought I had parts, but didn’t. Guess I need to take inventory of my PVC fittings, see what I need, go to the store and make a purchase.
A lot of people who live in rural areas have a replacement pump ready to go. When the pump goes out, swap it out with the new one and be done with it. Guess that is what I need to do.
Not having some small odds and ends on hand turned a simple task into a major two day event.
