The Case of the Broken Pump

A week ago, the heating system in the house went to halfcocked and refused to recover. It’s a geothermal system. A complicated construct, the vision of a great plumber’s technological curiosity 20 years ago; so its parts are fading. The circuit board burped a few months ago to the tune of 1K so we turned on the propane stove and prayed for a miracle.

Now, the propane stove works peachy keen in the main house (it has its own connected thermostat on the wall) but does not circulate in any proficient manner to my space in the far back corner. So rude, and brr so cold there when it’s the dead of winter and the heating system takes a vacation. After a week of all hope fading to black for a miracle return to service, mom and dad called the heating guys and swallowed hard at the expected expense.

Diagnosis, bad pump on the outbound loop.

A pump. This is the diagnosis that keeps hope alive to a minimize the repair bill. Pumps we can do.

Geothermal heat runs off long tubes of pressurized, water filled pipes that run underground. The temperature in those pipes remains stable year-round. It’s an earth enabled heat booster, if you will. You must pump the water through the pipes then through the condenser. This allows the heat pump unit to use that steady temperature of the water to either pre-heat the air or cool it down easier than without that steady, eddy temp assistance. I know, it’s confusing. For this system there are two loops of buried pipes involved, an outgoing and incoming loop to the tune of 2500 feet of buried piping.

I know where the loops are now because I broke them twice, building the barn. That will be $3,000 each occurrence please.

My dad is 90 years old, having reached that milestone on January 6^th, 2026. His body doesn’t work very well after a lifetime of work in the trades, by which I mean plumbing, but his knowledge base is spot on and second to none. So, he got the part number a couple days ago, researched it on the internet and yesterday it arrived in the mail. It’s a 10 lb. hunk of steel accompanied by a couple gaskets and a motor.

Meanwhile, my body was stuck in sedentary mode this day. Coffee didn’t help, probably because yesterday wasn’t sedentary, times ten. I did have plans for this day after a work, work session this morning involving spread sheets and data crunching. Those plans for later in the day featured a shovel and more wires; a ladder maybe; weekends around here tend to involve those kinds of things. I procrastinated with my friend Advil, hoping to recover well enough to do something besides sit on a heating pad.

At about three or so,  I thought I ought to prep the barn for night chores, but I noticed, while slurping a snack, that dad was MIA, not in his chair, not at his garage desk. It was then that I recalled that the part had arrived for the heating system and he might be under the house with it.

Good guess.

‘Under the house’ in this case refers to about a 4ft high ‘basement’. To navigate to the entrance door involves mud, thanks to the recent solar install. To navigate its concrete floors and aisles full of stuff, one sits on a rolling office chair to avoid smacking one’s head on the floor joists above, while looking for stuff. It’s a brilliant storage and retrieval system for stuff, sigh.

The heating system of course, lives down there in one corner. That entire corner is filled with an industrial city’s worth of pipes, water heaters and pressure and temporary monitoring systems. It’s enough to make a mad scientist drool. Down under a heating duct to the right is the broken pump’s location. There sat dad, on an upside down 5-gallon bucket, tools at hand, but incapable of bending to the degree required to replace the offending pump.

..and here's what this is for...

It occurred to me while I surveyed that scene that my entire relationship with my dad has evolved around building stuff and fixing stuff. Some father/daughter relationships are built around sports, or art, or attending dance recitals. Mine has always been about pipes, and ditches, I'll take it.

So there we were, he with the knowledge and the tools, and me small enough to reach into a corner with the tools. Access required a yogi squat, a set of end wrenches, a crescent wrench and a  screwdriver to remove the bad pump (don’t ask me about getting back up..that’s another issue; I can get down). We are also both deaf as posts, so the conversation is loud. The dogs up above were disturbed by the weird noise from under their feet.

I did have my favorite stocking cap on, the one with a USB rechargeable light in the front. Highly recommended for dark corner, basement pump replacements. Now you know. So, dad directed and I did the work. Dad put shutoffs on either side of each pump, btw, just for this reason, twenty years ago. How freaking brilliant.

Old pump out, pigtail disconnected, new pump in, pressure test, solid, rewire the old pigtail to the new pump. Plug it in. Mark the pump with a sharpie ‘1/18/26’. Called mom from the basement to check if it worked. Voila, we are warm again.

The Pump

“Dad,” I said, “If I die down here because I electrocute myself, or pressurized water slits my throat, it’s your fault.”

“I hope you left me your life insurance” he replied.

Love, expressed in pipes. It works and so does the heating system. Win/win.