Bitter cold tends to sort out the fittest wells in Spring Grove

The cold, particularly the kind of bitter cold we’re experiencing in Spring Grove lately, adds additional layers of challenge to everyday life. It thickens the oil in car engines and challenges batteries to turn those engines over to start. Parts are hard and brittle – more apt to break.

The torch is to unfreeze the nuts and bolts on this well.

The cold is also hard on Spring Grove wells. If the cold takes the upper hand, shutting down a well, the challenges for those living or working in the home or office the well supplies have another challenge to add to shoveling driveways and walks, bundling to stay warm or safely driving on icy roads; they suddenly find themselves without access to clean, fresh and potable water.

No showers, no water for cooking, no washing clothes or dishes, no flushing toilets – when the water doesn’t flow in your Spring Grove home, you suddenly discover how much you depend on it. That’s all the more true when you’re virtually trapped inside by sub-zero cold and drifts of snow. But, of course, that’s one of the times when your well is more likely to fail.

Throughout the year, well technicians try to warn people to maintain their wells. Of course, just because your well is maintained doesn’t guarantee the cold won’t win the fight but it dramatically changes the odds. In other words, if your well isn’t well maintained, it’s almost as though it’s sitting there waiting for the cold to come. Next thing you know, you turn a faucet handle, flush a toilet or try to draw some water from the kitchen sink and … nothing.

The problem with repairing a well in this kind of bitter cold is that it makes the process that much more difficult for your well technician. First of all, will they have trouble locating the well under the snow? Once they find the well, they have to use their fingers to hold small and intricate parts. The cold does a funny thing to finger dexterity.  It makes holding and manipulating those small parts all the more difficult.

A simple process of threading a screw into a threaded hole at 80 degrees is a major challenge when it’s below zero. Gloves will help keep the technician’s fingers warm but they generally charge too high a price in dexterity.

Often, the well technician has to work while enduring a driving wind that has wind chills to 50 below and lower.

John Matthesius, with McHenry Water Well & Pump, remembers when he was younger and working for his father back in the early ‘80s. The temperature dropped to 28 below. The wind chill factor was 82 below. It was hazardous to go outside for too long. And then the phones started ringing. And they kept ringing. The cold was more than many wells in the area could handle.

“I had to take a map and put pins for each call,” said John. “Then I went out on the most direct route possible. I’d spend half an hour. If I couldn’t get the well going in that time, I had to move on and come back to them. There were just too many people without water.”

While well technicians appreciate the extra work, they really don’t look forward to working in those conditions. As far as John is concerned, he’s hoping last winter, and the cold we’ve felt this week, aren’t indications of a bitter cold winter ahead.

Still, if your well fails, regardless of the cold, it’s comforting to know you can call John to come out and get the water flowing again.