Labor Day---for real!

Labor Day is a holiday, right? Thankfully, by the time this water leak was discovered almost everyone was 'home' from their relaxing day and ready to get dirty! Steve had just gotten in from working on my car and a guy drove past and said, "Hey, do you know you have water bubbling up from under your fence?" (I always wonder WHY people ask questions like this. I mean, really!) At any rate, we called some people and after some frantic calls by them, they got to work trying to stop the new stream in town.

Rod and Dorothy came down for dinner--we didn't realise we were going to give them a yard show, too! Rod seemed to enjoy all the commotion and company. At one point there were at least 7 people who stopped by to visit at one time. We had visits from the city policeman, the guy from the gas company, city workers who were retired, and a lot of neighbors who wondered why the water was off or wondered what was going on.
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As you can see, when the hole was dug the pipe was eventually found and yup, a stream of water was shooting out of the pipe. They put what is called a band aid on it (metal clamp) and left it to dry out. The problem was believed to have been caused by a giant poplar tree. It's roots appeared to have broken new ground as well as pipes. When they 'found' the root, the workers were not sure if it was the pipe or a gas line. The man pictured was on his tummy in the muck with his arm buried in muddy water and he had grabbed something, another man went down and scratched the thing and discovered he had bark under his nails. Until then, work slowed and the watchers moved further across the street. Which, in retrospect, was sort of silly. If a gas line was struck, being 20 feet or more away was not going to help!

The creek moved rather fast and flowed from the top of the fence (by the barricades) to the end of the fence down the hill. (Jon took a video, I'll see if I can add it in later) There, it vanished into a run off drain. When they were done with the digging and the fix, they stuck barricades in the mud and called it good. The next day they checked it again..and discovered it was still seeping. It is a very old pipe as you can see....

Thankfully, we have a chicken wire fence in the corner of the yard (the people before us said they had kept chickens in that area--) and since we use it once in a while for the dog, it made a 'fence' for us when we took the wooden one down. The city finally filled in the hole on Thursday. The main water guy told me, as he moved dirt, that the leak appeared to be ok now (I had looked at it Thursday morning and the pipe was still wet under the clamp!!) and if it wasn't they'd be back. (!!!!!!!)

All in all, it was an interesting experience and I am just very thankful OUR water was never bothered by the line breakage. Even if it was in our yard!