We had a major problem. As I have mentioned before, each day a well in the community is filled from some unknown source. The water is then pumped up into the water tower, where it is fed to smaller wells located in the yard of each house. Each house, in turn, pumps the water up to a storage tank on the roof. A full roof tank of water should last at least 2 days with normal use. A lot of washing or extra showering will obviously empty it faster, but in the past the pump has only been turned on for a while Monday through Saturday when Sudhaker is here, and never needs turning on on Sundays. I can’t say that we’ve ever gone up there to check the water level Sunday evening after the kids shower to see just how low it has gotten, but we generally don’t run out of water, and Sudhaker fills it again on Monday without incident.
Something changed. Suddenly, our water was disappearing. A full tank of water when Sudhaker left at 6pm was reduced to half a tank by the time we’d go to bed, and turned up empty the next morning or afternoon. The pump on the roof that feeds the water down into the house was constantly running as well. Not a good sign. After searching high and low for any sign of leakage or running water, Sudhaker, Scott and I were left baffled. There was just nowhere for this water to go. If it was a leak in the walls, the red brick would be soaking it like a sponge and creating a visable wet stain somewhere. In addition, our well in yard was almost completely dry, and we were looking at being entirely without water by the evening after the kids got their showers (IF they got their showers).
Sudhaker came and got busy wandering the neighborhood and making phone calls trying to get someone to come and figure things out, and managed to procure a water tanker to come and fill the well for us. After some time, he was able to get the a hold of the landlord, who arrived with 2 other guys in tow to assess the situation.
After some questioning and searching, they found it. The kitchen sink has two faucets, one for cold and one that should be for hot, if hot water was actually hooked up there. Apparently, the hot water faucet was inadvertently turned on. Now, under normal circumstances, in a “normal” place, that would have entirely no effect on anything. However, “normal” has a very different meaning in India, so having it turned on meant, of course, that a pipe somewhere was opened to allow all of our water to flow directly into the sewer. Of course…how stupid of us not to realize this! 🙁
As a remedy, they hovered around the sink for a good many minutes, crouched down examining everything, and finally emerged and announced that it had been taken care of. They had disconnected something or turned something or pressed something…I don’t know which, and now the hot water faucet would do what it was designed to do….nothing at all.
Ah, India. Gotta love it.