I’m not able to find a previous post on my water problems so I’ll start from scratch on this one.
This was the scene at 8:30AM this Wednesday as I was heading down to the Dept of Education in Roseville to learn about Title One applications for funding. Those of you who have noticed that the sidewalk on the lower half of my retaining wall as you’ve driven by must have wondered why it was always wet. Well, like anyone incredibly busy I managed to fool myself that it would eventually go away. I thought it was was a saturated lawn from the incredible winter snow and then the spring rains. As summer wore on and a long dry spell that explanation didn’t wear so well. Some time in August I finally called the City to have someone come over and tell me what my problem might be. Had the ground shifted above my house allowing water below ground to change course under my lawn? Was my sewage system leaking into the surrounding soil? Over the next seven or eight weeks a constant supply of visitors checked the problem out. It was, of course, the simplest explanation. I had a broken water pipe.
The excavators I called were filled to the gills with work orders as the winter approached. Shelton Excavation that had saved my during the JB Marvin disaster had seventy jobs lined up ahead of mine but recommended Superior Construction.
In a whirlwind I had no right to expect Duane Peterson got the permits for what he thought would be a simple morning job. No such luck. At 2:30 in the afternoon after a session on making the Title One application process simpler I got a text message from Claudia that all hell had broken lose. The leak was in the worst possible place and the house was crawling with people working on jack hammers. She wished I was home.
The leak was fixed just moments before I got home at 6pm. It took up to 14 people a half dozen trucks and ten hours to fix things up. Oh and by the way there was an imminent sink hole looming behind the retaining wall in the form of five cubic yards of nothingness.
Thursday and Friday were off an on cleaning days in the basement and errand running like my jaunt to Ace Hardware. I managed to dig a four foot hole down to the void and ordered some sand to begin filling it. I was told the work would require an electrician to ground the plumbing and got that settled. This morning I took all the sofa cushions in the basement out to the patio and beat the hell out of them with my old Wilson tennis racquet to get the cement dust out. I still have to reattach the sturdy lower shelf from my workroom back along the wall after the concrete repair cures a little more so I can put paint buckets and Rubbermaid bins back out of the way.
If an annoyance was to befall anyone I guess I’m as good a candidate to deal with it as anybody else. Everyone has nuisances like this and for many people this wouldn’t be much more than a speed bump. Still, I’ve had a lot of blogging in my head and the repair process has either kept me from it or drained me of energy. On the other hand its given me a lot of time to mull over the School Board’s current predicament. I’ve had a chance to refine some of my ideas for attending to them.
Oh and don’t go walking around my side yard. If you do I can’t guarantee that anyone will ever see you again.
