Ever since last Friday's rainstorm we have had muddy water throughout the house. We decided to clean our below ground cistern out. It filled with mud when our back rooms flooded. Since it needs to be done just about once a year and hasn't been done in a long time, we figured it was time. We turned the city water off on Saturday so we could empty the tank. We got it mostly empty on Thursday and Jason got inside. It is about 7 ft tall and 6 or 7 ft wide. He used a two buckets. One was put underneath the pump spout and the other he used to fill that bucket. We turned on all of the faucets in the house and started draining all of the gross muddy water. We had about 2 inches of mud in the bottom of the tank. Jason did a great job cleaning it out. Once he had it mostly clean he used the wet dry vac to get it really good.
Because of the amount of rain that has been falling lately we have been getting water every day (almost). We were hoping to get water that afternoon, but we didn't. We had to eat out for dinner. Normally this would not be a problem for me, but I was so tired I just wanted to stay home. I have to admit though, the pizza was really good.
Friday morning we still hadn't gotten any water. Thankfully we had the presence of mind to save several buckets of water aside for flushing toilets. We all bathed with baby wipes, but still didn't really feel clean. Around 1:30 pm we started to hear air flowing through our pipes and not long after water also started coming in. At 4:00 pm our tank had filled enough that we could turn on the pump. It was so wonderful to take a shower.
The only problem was that all of the muddy water that we had taken out of the cistern using the pump had been sitting in our pipes all day. We flushed our toilets more than 20 times before the water came out clean. All of the sinks were pumping out black water for a while.
Thankfully,the water has finally started coming out clean today. The little things we take for granted are sorely missed when we don't have them. We are very thankful for clean water.
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