Apparently someone in the past noticed that there was a pipe that leaks when the cistern is turned on. It looks like it once had a purpose, but doesn’t seem to now. Since it was leaking, they decided to pound a stick into the pipe to help stop the leak.

I don’t know how long it has been this way (my guess is 20 years at LEAST), but it started leaking again. We have a call into Papa Smurf to save the day … again.

Took me a while to actually post this — but it happened on the same day as the water. . . April fool’s day… how appropriate.

If you recall the same day we had water issues (see posts here and here), that wasn’t the only thing going on.

Since the worker-bees didn’t have water, they kept busy by taking out the coal from the basement. (Before the boiler, the house was heated with coal. My uncle remembers feeding the coal every night to make sure there was heat.) Apparently they had some coal left when they got the new boiler and it was… well, it was still there. In a huge pile in the basement. But I digress. When they started taking it out of the basement, it was partially a relief because I had no idea what to do with it and didn’t want it there.

Apparently there was more coal than I thought. They filled one of the dumpsters and still had more. So a truck came to get the full one, so a second can drop off a new one. When the truck came along, it whipped around the corner… and drove straight over a small wall (about 2 feet tall). They tried to catch it, but ended up getting high centered.

Now all the worker bees are trying to figure out how to get this truck off the wall. They first try taking a long piece of lumber to try and give traction to the truck. That didn’t work, so they tried taking rocks from other parts of the wall to build up something for the truck to drive. That didn’t work. The truck is kind of heavy and putting rocks under the tire of a truck that is high centered wouldn’t help… but they had more faith. In the end, it didn’t work.

So they decide to take a chain and attach it to the wench that drags the dumpster on the truck, to the dumpster full of coal. Everyone was watching to see if the truck would move, but no one was watching the dumpster. In case you didn’t know, the truck high centered, weighs more than a dumpster full of coal. There were a few surprised faces (especially those in the way of the dumpster).

Next option – another truck! It seems as though the second truck cannot go up a slight hill backwards, while pulling another truck. Now it is also stuck and there is no more room for another truck to drag them both out (although I was secretly hoping they’d try… I was laughing so hard at this point that I couldn’t wait for the next thing.)

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention… it was raining.

Finally they got the 2nd truck out and turned around. They were then able to pull the 1st truck out.

By the time this whole thing was over I couldn’t wait for a shower. Thankfully we had water again.

I did take pictures — enjoy them.

Getting a Truck off a wall