Wow...In Spite Of Everything...

Got a call this morning from mom..."The guys are here and are coming in to put in the new waterline in town."

Uhhhh....Okay...not really what I had planned for the day, but Hey...my schedule is pretty flexible.

After much discussion...I told them that we wanted to tap into the old waterline right by the crawlspace and run a new direction with it.

We looked things over...

And more discussion...The digger thought the best and easiest thing to do would be to tap into the line about 20 feet from the house and go to the new location. He said it would be much cheaper too.

A little more discussion...Well, that might work, but what if the water leak is between the shut off and where we are going to slice into the old water?...And we will have to be very careful digging up the old line because the electric line runs directly over it.

Needless to say, when people who do things day in and day out decide they want to do it a certain way...that is what they do. So they used their little electric locater to find exactly where the line was and started digging...

KaChing...Found the electrical line...

K-so that is not exactly how they wanted to locate it!! My mom about had a coronary. Strike One!! The waterline was located a couple more feet down, cut, capped and the water turned on to make sure there were no leaks.

Yea...You guessed it...The meter was still showing water going through. So that meant that the most likely place for the leak was next to the house. Now, the guys were really, REALLY hoping they wouldn't have to dig this out, because just outside this crawl space is where every major line goes into the house. No such luck today. They were going to have to dig here to find the water line that runs to the barn so they could tap into it...
On the way down, they were going to have to avoid the electric line, the water main and the sewer line. They managed to get past the sewer line without damage.

Whoops! Found the water main...Strike two...

A frantic trip to the city office to find one of the city workers so they could come shut the water off, a lot of bailing of water and they were back on track. Finally, they found the water line and the leak. One of the renters must have let the water freeze a few years back and that had caused the connection to crack....
Now, if we had started here...Like I suggested...we could have just replaced the connection and put in a new hydrant at the barn and Voila...it would have all been fixed. But as we know...even if we know something in our gut, we still have a tendency to defer to experts.

How is this for a discombobulated mess...

That would be the criss-crossed mess of water main, water line and sewer line. The guys were patting themselves on the back about not wrecking anything else when one of them went to step over the sewer line, tripped, stepped on it and broke the connection going to the clean-out pipe. Strike THREE!!

Alright, by this time, most of the yard was dug up, so they just replaced the connection, dug the trench for the new line, laid the water line...

And Ta..Daaaa... A functioning, non-leaking hydrant...

Placed exactly where the new fence line will run. So next summer I can put a tank here, add a float and not have to worry about filling tanks when I am gone. In the process, I asked the guy if he would use his bucket to tear out the ragged remains of the windbreak. Within minutes is was removed...an entire days work by hand. I love big machinery!!

Tomorrow morning the electrician will repair the cut electrical line. In a couple of days, the guys will be back to finish filling in the holes and level the area. Next spring I will have to replant grass so the weeds don't take over. And I hope we don't have to do this again within the next 30 years.

The boys are wiped after a long day...

And I am right behind them in the heading to bed department!!