oloriel | There's no curse in the tongues of Elves or Men...

After I noticed that we had no hot water last night at 1 am, and we spent two hours de-icing the frozen pipe that was the reason that there was not enough water in the furnace, thus too little pressure on the pump, thus no hot water arriving in the house, we thought that was it in terms of furnace trouble.
I mean, what could possibly be worse than spending two hours at night trying to get your furnace back to life while even in the furnace room the wet rags we used to wipe up water earlier in the day (well, the previous day) are frozen like the wet towels they give you at the ~~Helcaraxë~~ Drift Ice Museum in Abashiri, Japan - well, what could possibly be worse?

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Weeeeell.

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So there's a pump that pumps water from the furnace (out in the former pigsty) into the house.

This is especially important when it's freezing outside, and by "freezing" I mean everything between -10°C and -21°C as we had this weekend, because as we all know still waters freeze sooner than running.

For some reason that pump decided to stop working in the course of the day, which of course we only realised when the first pipe burst.

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Oh, after the bit of snow that fell on Friday and the bit more that fell yesterday, we had a blizzard all day, too.

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So we called the plumber, but seeing how it is Sunday he naturally didn't answer the phone.

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So Jörg tried to repair the burst (7 meters up on the wall of the house, I might add, just to make things really interesting), but no chance. Take a moment to picture this: there's a ladder, and my husband's standing on it, and before we closed the main valve, a thumb-thick jet of water came shooting out of the pipe...

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Getting a bit frantic. Plumber still not answering the phone. Panicking.

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Fortunately Jörg remembered that the horse-lady to whom we let the meadow downhill is married to a plumber, so he called there. They were at home. Of course he'd help, said he, except that he had no idea how to get to us in this weather.

Jörg has snow chains, so he put them on the car and drove up and picked him up. And the horse-lady husband climbed up on the ladder (did I mention the 7 meters, and the blizzard?) and welded the burst shut.

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And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why it is obviously a good thing that we're letting the meadow that we don't need for a less-than-symbolic sum. Because you never know when you need a trailer or a pony or a plumber in a pinch. On a Sunday a few days before Christmas. In a blizzard.

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Horse-lady husband also brought a Christmas gift, but fortunately we were prepared and while he was working I packed a basket with walnuts and elderberry-ginger jelly and apple mustard and chocolates and cheese from a disgustingly expensive but very good dairy.
Shut up. Sometimes I enjoy being a country wife. In fact, on occasion I'd so much rather be a housewife than a pickaxe-wielding, plaster-smeared builder.

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Meanwhile mother-in-law and I went inside, because we couldn't help anyway.

Mother-in-law had a rather clumsy day, apparently.

Just after we'd discovered the burst, Jörg's brother called: His grandfather-in-law had passed away.
"Yes, can't talk now, we have a problem too" is NOT an appropriate reaction, no matter how you meant it.

"Since we're inside, can we do the dishes or something?"
MIL, what did we just do? Shut the main valve. WE DO NOT HAVE WATER. (I am not yet desperate enough to melt and cook snow for dish-washing water, thanks.)
"Or I know! We could clean the showcase so we don't have to do it next week!"
What did I say about the water?
Five minutes later: "Couldn't you do some washing?"
WE. HAVE. NO. WATER.
"But I feel so useless! I want to do something helpful!"
Not annoying me would be helpful. Do I have to come up with something for you to do now on top of everything?

Also I had to remind her about three times that it's SUNDAY, which means that tomorrow is MONDAY. She was convinced that it was Monday or even Tuesday already, and I have no idea why, because she wouldn't even be here and helping on the site if it weren't the weekend...?

Yesterday I told her not to park her car in the bend underneath the walnut tree, because a) that tree occasionally sheds branches, especially when they're heavy with snow, and b) if someone tries driving down our street and loses control, their car will slam exactly into hers. And she said, "That's true", and parked her car elsewhere. So far, so good.
THIS MORNING she parked her car - in the bend underneath the walnut tree.

This would be tragic if it were a sign of beginning dementia, but actually I suspect it's more a matter of Simply Not Thinking.

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We reached the actual plumber eventually. Couldn't come, blizzard. So Jörg picked him up. Hurrah for snow chains. Plumber managed to kick the pump back to working (otherwise the welded pipe (and the others) would just have burst again sooner or later, but as there's no explanation why the pump stopped working in the first place, he surmised that it must be broken somehow. We'll get a new one.

Hopefully the old one will continue to work until the replacement arrives. Otherwise we'll have to keep hot water running at awkward times to compensate by drawing for the lack of pumping, and we've had to waste waaay too much water already.

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Bloody hell.

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Incidentally, this is the kind of worst-case scenario where it's worth shit that the pipe-fitters are obliged by law to repair defects in their construction at their expense. No law in this country will obligate someone to repair a pipe burst in 7 meters height in freezing conditions in a blizzard. Or even try and reach our house (down a steep and winding road) in a blizzard. And if that burst hadn't been repaired, we'd have been unable to open the main valve, and would've been without water - and heating, because water-based - until the weather got better. Force majeure. And the other three pipes would likely have burst too, eventually. Probably our insurance or maybe the plumber's insurance would've covered that. Guess how much of a consolation that would've been?
Yeah.
Just not pissing off the people you depend on might be the better idea after all. Frustrating as it may be on occasion.