A Matter of Water

A Matter of Water

It is Monday morning. We do not have any water. We have not had any water since Sunday afternoon. We are on the tail end of a long weekend, and the people to whom we report this issue work for the local government and are therefore enjoying their Labour Day, water-full weekend. Although we may be suffering today, it is actually my fault. Here's why....

Every house in Tuk has a large water tank somewhere inside, usually around the furnace and the plumbing. Ours is taller than me, about 6 feet high, and about 4 feet wide and I'd say 6 feet long. There is a truck that comes by and fills your water tank, followed by the truck that comes in right behind it and removes your sewage. You can decide how frequently you want water and/or sewage removal based on your family's needs. The most frequent plan is a daily delivery/removal but you can tailor your service based on your needs, from every other day to twice a week down to once a week. For a family of five, the daily service is what was recommended for us by Rebecca, the woman whose house we're renting. She also told me that she had daily service.

I mentioned a while back that while we were in Whitehorse, we had the chance to meet up with Rebecca and her family, because she has moved there to go to Teacher's College and we were passing through on our way North. Anyway, she said that she had called the Hamlet (this is what the municipal building and services are referred to by the locals) and made arrangements to switch our names on the account. I thought she had meant that she had successfully switched our names and that we would continue to receive daily water/sewage. I also saw the water delivery/sewer removal trucks coming around our street the day after we arrived. I was busy by the time they came closer to our house and I heard a funny noise and figured that the trucks were doing their business at our house, and thought nothing of it. Actually, it was the furnace turning on and working super hard, which caused the hot water tank to go on and fill up a bit from the tank. This is a familiar noise now, but at the time I had no idea what it was. In actual fact the truck missed us completely and went on down the road.

This means we have not had any water in our house since we arrived on Tuesday. We are coming up on a week now! Our land lady, Maureen, Rebecca's mom, warned us of the obnoxious sound the hot water tank makes when it is trying to refill from the tank when the water level is below the suction line. There we were on Sunday morning and I was trying to get hot water from the sink to wash dishes when out of the blue it sounded like a herd of elephants running through the furnace/laundry room and out into the living room! We ran in and sure enough, there was the hot water tank trying to refill from the water tank, which was below the suction line. Darn! Greg turned off our water, and went out to buy some drinking water to get us through the remainder of the weekend. We will have to wait to wash our clothes (we will have accumulated about 3 loads of laundry by the end of today) and as of last night we have been putting our dirty dishes in the dishwasher. By tomorrow we will need to use the dishwasher but by then we'll be up and running. We all need to shower, but we were told by some of the teachers yesterday that when they learned their water lesson the hard way they came and showered at the school because the gym washrooms have showers.

The most disgusting thing is the toilet but I will not alert your noses to those smells. Suffice to say the bathroom stinks and it's going to take more than a few gallons of water to fill the tank in the toilet enough to be able to flush it. Since a gallon of water is $13, we'll suffer with the smell. That's why you close the door when you're using it anyway! We also had the ingenious idea of taking our pitchers and water bottles to the school for refilling, but we really need the water for drinking, and without our van at the moment, the walking back and forth to the school to refill water bottles is ridiculous.

This really stinks, both literally and figuratively! At least the only thing really bothered here, besides our delicate noses, is our pride. We weren't here a week and we already have learned about an aspect of life in Tuk the hard way. My prep time is first thing in the morning, and you can bet I will be calling the Hamlet to schedule daily delivery/removal. When Greg was telling some of the teachers about what happened, they all chuckled and said that it only took once to be without water before you became super vigilant, and believe me, with the smell in our bathroom at the moment, lesson learned!

UPDATE:

Since the writing of this epistle early this morning, the water crisis has been solved.  The water truck was out doing deliveries this morning and Greg flagged the gentleman down and explained our dilemma.  After a chuckle, the guy happily filled our tank for us.  When the tank is being filled, it sounds like an enormous bath is being drawn in your living room!  It's super loud - impossible to miss, now that we know what it sounds like. It was definitely music to our ears!  We all ran to flush the toilet, and then I hopped in the shower and did a load of laundry right away. Everyone else is going to be showering tonight, too.  Thank goodness! Of course, I still need to call the Hamlet tomorrow morning...no need to experience that again!