Things you don’t like to come home to: a backhoe parked on the grass and an 8 foot deep trench dug in the yard.
We noticed with the spring thaw that we were building a lovely swamp in the yard — we had a constant leak from the water main feeding our house. The only way to deal with it was to bring in the heavy equipment, excavate the pipe, and replace the leaky broken bit. I think I’m going waterless tonight, but they think it will be fixed tomorrow morning.
If it was on their side of the valve, lucky you. Otherwise you’d be in for a shocker of a bill
Uggh! Is it something on your end you have to pay for?
I just spent way too much money a few weeks ago for a failing water heater. No disaster, just a popped breaker short of a fire and taking cold showers for several days. Supposed to be good for you. I dreaded it. Plumber didn’t cap a wire when installing the new unit, which I found out after the electrician came out and finished the job.
Aside from that I had a septic clog that required a full drain quite a few years ago. No full system issues like a main.
Yeah, I had a (small) leak in my water main a few years ago that required something similar, and it was on my side of the meter so I had to pay for it. The trench was quite short though since the front of my house is close to the street.
On a tangent, though, that thick dark soil looks nice. I can see why you live in an area with lots of agriculture. Where I am, we have about 2 or 3 inches of dark topsoil and several feet of rocky, yellowish, high clay soil underneath, and then bedrock.
I had a water issue with my basement a few weeks ago. Water was seeping into the basement (furnished with a bedroom down here) and then it became a flood. I took off from worked, kept sopping water up by beach towels and portable water vac, every twenty minutes for two days straight since the contractor couldn’t make it. I was so tired and got a bit of sleep then right back at it. Finally, contractors made it and told me the bad news of needing to build a new retaining wall, almost $25,000!! Thank goodness they decided to go with a new sump pump and that fixed our flooding issue.
No matter how bad this is, my neighbor had it worse at the same time, a sewage leak and had the city outside breaking up their driveway with heavy equipment for days. So, I count myself lucky and realize that when you think you have it worse off, there’s always someone with worse problems than you.
wow I never thought about how deep a water main has to be in areas where it freezes.I replaced my water main a few years ago and only needed a shovel to go about two feet down if that. If the leak is on your side of the meter you might see a nice reduction in the water bill.
Get off my lawn!
“Another few feet and we’ll reach the nest of giant spiders”
I’m shocked. Don’t you like swamps? You could get fishing spiders (Dolomedes)!
I’ll be seeing a similar sight in the near future as the city will finally be replacing the lead pipe coming into my hundred year old house.
If you dig the pit a bit deeper you might find some cool cylinder or something.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=GT3W6mhvdMY
….and Nicholas Cage found something interesting in a pit in the garden one morning.