Spring Ritual of Turning on the Pump House

One of the spring opening rituals is getting the water on to the 6 summer cabins. Because this is a lake water system and because these water lines are above ground, this cannot be done until the nights are consistently above freezing and the lake ice out. Mike has been hooking up all the cabins and all plumping to the bunkhouses, shower houses and laundry room in anticipation of starting up the pump house.

We have two sources of water. Our lodge and cabin 7, both winterized, are on well water. The lines are buried and heated and there is no threat of freezing water lines.

Our summer cabins (1 through 6) and the rest of the resort are on lake water. This lake water is pumped to the a holding tank in the pump house (between cabins 3 and 4). From there it goes through two macrolite filters and a bag filter into a 1,000 gallon holding tank where chlorine is added. From this large holding tank it is pumped to the cabins and rest of the resort as needed. The macrolite filters removes particles down to the 3 to 5 micron range.

For the lake water, we test the chlorine level and turpidity levels daily. We are always well below the norm on turpidity levels since Clearwater is such a clean lake. In fact, we joke that that the turpidity level is lower before it goes through the filtration process since the lake is so clean. Once a month we send a sample into the state health department to test the water and we have never had any problems or issues. The health depart visits two or three times a summer to check out the whole water system. They check the well water, calibrate our instruments and recheck our pump house levels. Once the lake system is up and running the water is perfectly acceptable to drink anywhere on the resort.

Well, hopefully Mike will be turning on that magic switch today and the tanks will fill and we will have water to the entire place. Of course, it is never that easy and there are breaks in the lines to fix and pressure to test and all the other fun things that go with maintaining a water system. We call Mike the 'Water Man'.......that is on the days we don't call him the 'Septic Man', 'Boat Man', or 'Maintenance Man'.