All shall have prizes
I think we have finally got the rights of the water supply. This after the farmer opened and emptied the tanks, and we all puzzled at the total absence of anything leading downhill, etc. In fact, there were only two pipes in toto, one old lead pipe which came out of the middle tank heading straight for the cottage, and the overflow pipe, to which the cottage’s new system is now attached. It all seemed rather a lot for one little cottage, even by Victorian standards. Then we bumped into the merry peasant who sold us the house in Turriff the other day, and asked him about it. It turns out that the old lead pipe which leads off towards the cottage out of the MIDDLE tank, which we thought was the original cottage supply, is actually us: having been born and brought up in the house, he was quite clear that the cottage in its unimproved state hadn’t had a water supply, but brought the stuff in from a standpipe. Tank 3 is merely overflow, and what happens is that the pipework is led round and down the side of the track before heading off downhill. There was a lot of technical stuff, which I did not pretend to understand, about the water being pumped back uphill again to improve the pressure, which may account for the curious layout of the pipework. A further confusion of course was that we were all looking for black plastic pipe not lead, but the remaining leadwork, which there cannot be much of, must be joined to black plastic within a few feet of its exit. So our friend the farmer is vindicated, the tank is clean, the water is running freely (though the UV filter still needs changing), and we simply try and remember that problems with water supply around harvest time is one of the things which happens.