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LED lights are advertised to last many years, much longer than older incandescent lights. In my experience, however, I'm lucky to get more than a year or two out of a light bulb, regardless of the brand. Despite the cost, their life is shorter than incandescent or CFL bulbs. Now to my topic. I'm...

I have a submersible pump in my well. The pipe (1" copper) comes into the house, goes through a check valve, then into the pressure tank and the rest of the plumbing. That check valve is failing. I noticed a couple of days ago that the pump was running when it shouldn't have been and found the...

The bottom floor is a garage, so it's a slab. It won't go through the foundation unless I dig it up and raise it. I don't plan to touch the water line or dig down that far at all for any reason. If the foundation being above the line is a problem, I'll just move the addition to avoid it...

That ground was last disturbed over 40 years ago and has been under a driveway ever since. I kind of figured it would be pretty well settled by now. Is that a faulty assumption? If I put the foundation there, the line wouldn't go through the foundation; it would be 1-2 feet below it.

I'm considering building an addition to my house, but have run into something that might or might not be an issue. Two questions: 1. Building what I have in mind puts the corner of the addition close to my well, only about 4 feet from the corner. I'm not really comfortable with that, but I'm...

My house is of the split foyer type, where the front door opens onto a landing between the upper and lower floors. We always hated the small area there and decided push out the front wall there a few feet and add on an entryway as part of a siding/roof replacement project a few years ago. The...

In this case, it's not replacing homes with more valuable ones, it's building a new development on farmland. My house (and my 3 neighbors) sits on the edge of the development and is in the way. Part of the project is to move the road to solve some other issues that the local powers have been...

I briefly thought about this, but it's not really a good option for me in this case. They're going to be putting in high density housing. I'm not sure if that means apartments and condos or small homes on small lots, but either way, that's not appropriate for my family. As high density housing...

You make a good point. I'm someone who is always careful not to take advantage of others, sometimes to a fault. Thanks for pointing out that I can't take advantage of the developer in this case. Thinking about it objectively, it's going to be all I can do to not get taken advantage of.

Thanks for the replies so far. I'm not generally a greedy person, and I don't want to take advantage of anyone. At the same time, though, I don't want to be taken advantage of, either. I really have no idea what my property is worth in this situation, and how much (if any at all) the specifics...

I live in the country, not far out of town, surrounded by fields. When I moved into my house almost a dozen years ago, I was informed that the 50 acre lot behind and to the side of me was for sale (and had been for a few years) for commercial development. We knew at the time that at some point...

Unfortunately, I don't know the answer to that either. I did drop a weighted line down the well last fall to calculate the volume of water when I was chlorinating the well subsequent to a changed pressure tank. I found that the pump was at about 65-70 feet, but I don't know how much casing is...

I was afraid it would just be a distraction, so I didn't explain earlier. But, since you asked, here's the story. Our water level has always been very high. Whenever the farmer would water the field next door, and when the snow would melt each spring, it would get high enough that our drain...

My well has been having some issues lately. It started a month or two ago when I suddenly had a lot of sediment in my water. I ran some sprinklers outside for a day or so and it cleared out, but the sprinklers were full of sand by the time it was clear. Since that time, it has happened a...

My water softener has stopped drawing brine. For the last several months, the capacity has been significantly reduced. It was still using salt, but it seemed to use less salt than usual with each regeneration. Now, however, it seems to have stopped drawing brine altogether. The softener is...

I'm adding another outbuilding to my yard and need to run some wire out to it. I would like to run a 40 amp circuit to it, which would require three #8 wires. To run this out to the building requires a ~100 foot buried conduit. I already have a buried 1/2" PVC conduit with #12 wires in it...

I spent a bit of time looking at the wiring diagram and checking continuities/voltages/etc. trying to figure out how it all works. The diagram showed two optional limit switches in the same circuit as the pressure switch. I found one on the heat exchanger and eventually found the second one on...

I have a Ducane MPGA100B4B furnace that quit working yesterday. When the thermostat calls for heat the inducer motor starts and runs for ~15 seconds and then quits. It does nothing else. Here's what I've checked so far: Ignitor: I pulled out the ignitor and it looks fine. My multimeter...

I had thought that was probably the case, just based on what I know about pumps in general, but I know nothing about submersible pumps and didn't know whether they were built differently. Thanks for the information.

Yes, I had figured I would need a valve below the pump, as well as one to block off the rest of the house and the pressure tank when using the hand pump. So, are there some submersible pumps out there that water couldn't be pulled through, as JoeD suggested there might be? If so, are they...