FIXING A SCREW UP

Not too long after we moved from Lake Havasu to the outskirts of Tucson, I began an ongoing series of improvement projects to our new rural property.   One of the first things I did, well before the garage was built, and new concrete was laid, was the trenching, and placement of several new water & irrigation lines.  It wasn't until about a month ago, that I decided to hook up one of those water lines to the main service near the left front corner of the house.  That's when things went downhill fast!

In just a matter of a few minutes, I noticed water bubbling out of the ground near the right front corner of the house, in the area where I had recently planted a tree.   Fortunately, I had anticipated the possible need to shut off this new water line, and had installed a shut off valve.  What I didn't foresee, was the need to use this valve so quickly.  It was obvious, the new water line was broken somewhere near the new tree, and probably well back under the concrete.   It's a good thing that no telepathy professionals were close by, because their ears would have been scorched with the bad words echoing through my thoughts.

My first reaction was to leave the water turned off, and push the fix off until another day.  Well, that day was yesterday, as this lingering problem had been a weight on my shoulders for over a month.  The fix started with hand digging the new tree up, trying to not damage any of the root system.  Once that was accomplished, I used the backhoe to carefully dig out this small area that is bordered by the house, and by concrete.  Once I had a hole that was 2-3 feet deep, I jumped in and began hand tunneling under the concrete toward where I thought the water was coming from.  Let me point out that this is not a job that you want to tackle with the idea that you might not get dirty.

I first exposed the electrical conduit to the garage, then after digging back about 4 feet under part of the concrete driveway, I found the water line at a point where it made a 90 degree turn.   This is where I discovered that all of this work to fix a leaking water line was totally my fault from the very beginning.

When I was originally laying and connecting all of the pieces to this water line, it seems that I neglected to glue the pvc pipe on the right, to the 90 degree elbow.  My first thought was "way to go stupid"!!  Had I double checked all of the connections, this manual labor would have been preventable.  The silver lining was that the fix was as simple as cleaning the two pieces, priming & gluing them together.

When I retested the water line under pressure, everything looked good, and I began to refill the hole, doing everything in reverse.  Eventually, by late afternoon, I had the tree replanted, and the landscape materials were back on the ground. 

Now that my yesterday's labor is done without having to tear up any concrete, and the problem is fixed, the only bad remnant is the aching muscles.  I guess I shouldn't complain, and be glad that as an official O.F. (old fart), I'm still able to do just about everything that I did when I was a Y.S. (young stud).   Despite the sore body, there's noticeably less weight on my shoulders this morning, and I have a working water faucet next to the garage!