This time last year we were entering "water problems" month. Not so much about drowning in far too much rain, although that has been happening for the last few days.

Last year, over a few weeks, our river pump blew up, the water tank slowly drained out, and then the well pump started getting weaker and weaker.

Luckily the well pump was after the other issues were sorted. It added to the endless drag of ongoing water issues, but at least it wasn't at exactly the same time.

Outside the house is a bizarre nest of pipes. It looks like some sort of amateur sculptural art-piece, with curving water pipes and multiple taps. While it isn't textbook neat, its surprisingly versatile. I can, if I want, pump water from the river to the house. Or from the tank, to the garden. Or even, if I was mad, from the well to the river….and all other possible combinations.

So when the well pump started to trickle slower and slower, we cut over to the water tank effortlessly.

Having been through the long saga of installing a new river pump, I was very unenthusiastic about working on the well pump. It’s a complicated unit, (officially a two pipe jet pump), and before I did anything I marked each connection with different colored tape so I could put it back together as painlessly as possible….two inlets, one outlet, a line to the pressure bladder…a plumbing gumby like me could easily get confused.

But it was quite simple….the controller that kicks in when the pressure bladder loses pressure was simply gummed up with spiderwebs. A vacuum and a scrape and the whole thing came back to life.

So it was no surprise to find the same thing happening again this year. The giveaway is the most noticeable thing…the pressure, both hot and cold, in the kitchen tap. Then the clothes washing machine started throwing a fit, with an error message indicating "No water". But oddly, the showers, the bathroom taps, the dishwasher were all fine.

I confidently uncapped the controller….and it was spotless. One desiccated earwig, almost no spiderwebs. (I wrapped the whole thing in tape last year to prevent any new entrants.)

And thinking about it….the dishwasher line comes from the kitchen sink. So if its fine, and the tap is not, the problem is in the tap.

The tap was one of those single handle infinite-control models. I spent half an hour peering into a tiny socket trying to work out what sort of fitting would be needed to remove the tap head. , It was a non-standard star-shaped bolt that held the head on. The custom key wasn't taped below the sink that I could find. The conclusion was….I would have to force it off, and probably replace the tap.

When the conclusion is that the solution is a catastrophic, destructive one, it’s a good idea to check in with someone else that your logic is holding up. I went through the whole thing with my wife, explained what had happened, and the logic that had got me to the tap being the problem.

While we were standing there discussing it, (my wife's request was that I go and buy the new tap before I wrecked the current one), I suddenly looked at the tap again…and unscrewed the aerator filter in the tap mouth. Completely blocked with well grit.

A quick rinse, and it was fixed.

The clothes washer is still playing up. I'll be checking the filters on that next.