Water leak out front...

Water Leak
Week of May 21st, 2007

Remember when I mentioned the water leak out in front of my house, discovered first thing Demo Day 1? Sometime in the week following, the week of the 21st of May, my brother-in-law and I set out to investigate the leak and its source.

After a little exploratory digging, we unearthed the culprit. And found good news and bad. The good news was that at some point in the recent past, the water line from the meter to the house had been replaced with PVC pipe (instead of an older, cast iron pipe, I suppose). Which basically meant: we just had to find the leak and could fix it ourselves. The bad news was that the valve-thingy (honestly, it's what it's called) that hooked onto the side of the meter itself and into which the PVC was run out of, was old as... dirt... and had almost returned to dust. It was made out of a corroded piece of pipe that literally crumbled when pressure was applied.

My brother-in-law wrestled the piece off and we searched more for other leaks. We found two in the PVC pipe. So we eyeballed measurements and went off in search of the parts.

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Hours later, and after a lunch break, we arrive back at my house with freshly-bought PVC parts, the appropriate supplies to fix the pipes, and a new valve-thingy, given to us for free by the City. They took one look at the old piece and declared that it was obsolete (obviously, it's almost a hundred years old, probably).

Brother-in-law set out to fix the leak. I have to honestly give him complete credit here because I wouldn't have known where to even start to try to fix the thing. After only a trip or more to the hardware store, he had the thing completely fixed. What I would have had to hire out to get fixed cost me only a hot lunch for him and around $7 at the hardware store. Can't beat that. Plus I learned a little about plumbing that day, too.

And even better, when the water bill came for that month, it didn't register the leak at all.

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Here's the picture of the completed project, after brother-in-law was finished and before we filled it back in with dirt. I tell you, I'm lucky he's my brother-in-law.