While it doesn’t have the prestige of growing your own food or generating your own power, having the tools, spare parts and knowledge to be able to fix things when they go wrong can be really handy. It can save you time and money and mean that you can sort the problem out rather than have to go straight to ‘replace’. But you have to keep an eye on your spares!
Due to the cool weather and plentiful rain, I have not really needed to water the veggies much, but the temperature has picked up into the mid to high 20’s recently (Sept 2025) so I figured it was time to give some of the ollas a fill. I prefer to use our stored water for such things and to that end have the 5,500 litre rainwater tank at the northern end of the house plumbed into a tap in the back yard. There is a hose reel next to tap, so I connected up and away I went. But the pressure was not what I expected!
O-rings in both places needed replacing.
I shut the 12v pump down and started to inspect things. There are a couple of hose fittings as part of the hose reel and on closer inspection both were leaking, not badly, but still leaking. The usual thing I do when this happens is to replace the O-ring on the tap fitting where the hose connector sits and that usually fixes the problem. I have a supply of spare O-rings of this sort for just this issue, and in the event, replacing the O-rings did the trick.
Unfortunately, the pressure was still not up to scratch, so I went around to where the pump was, just below the water tank. As soon as I turned the tank valve on allowing water into the pump, water came gushing out of the pump, where the hoses fitted in on both sides – inlet and outlet. Maybe the same problem? After much grunting and colourful language, I was finally able to remove the inlet hose fitting and it did, in fact, have an O-ring seal. Unfortunately, it was larger than the usual 12mm tap and hose type that I had.
Water gushing from the pump
Years ago I bought in a whole stack of various O-rings because, you know – spares! So I inspected my stash, found one that might work, but as I stretched it over the fitting it snapped. It then occurred to me that I bought those spare O-rings probably forty years ago or more. Crap!
Various replacement parts (Including O-rings!)
Off to the local plumbing shop to get some larger ones. The lovely lady behind the desk gave me a few for nothing, but she was non-technical, and I had to make a guess as to which ones would fit, so I got two sizes that looked like they might be right. After wrestling the smaller one on and reconnecting the inlet hose back to the pump, I turned on the tank valve and no leak!
Took a fair bit of effort to separate the hose from the pump!
Unfortunately, the outlet hose was still gushing, so I pulled the same manoeuvre and removed the outlet fitting again and installed the smaller O-ring and…… gush, still! (also crap!) I figured I had stuffed something up but for sheer cussedness I removed the fitting again and replaced the smaller O-ring with the larger one, aaaand, it worked! No gushing or even leaking at all! (woo hoo!)
I could now go back to providing water to the veggies without the worry that I was wasting water all over the place.
The moral of the story: Spares are good, but you need to keep an eye on them and sometimes you may need to replace them as they age.
P.S. As a result of my original post, a mate let me know that another way around the problem could have been to roll some Teflon thread tape between your hands to create a sort of string, then use that as a temporary replacement for the O-ring. Good idea!
