Friday, July 23, 2010

Wet Spot

I woke up to a wet spot. Yikes.. I didn't know the woman..Had to do something quickly, because...



Jacksonville is Hot at this time of year and I had to dig before the sun got above my shade trees.
She ran over the pipe. I don't blame the woman because I said it was ok to park on the grass due to the number of people attending class, exceeding my parking area.
The water pipe was only a few inches below ground and I noticed a dark area in the grass when I was mowing the night before. First step was an exploratory dig to affirm my fears. Yes there was a leak in the one inch PVC pipe so I turned off the water to the house at the entry point and the street to contain it. I didn't want the hot water heater to backflow and burn out an element. Could have turned off the breaker to it but I'm lazy. There is a valve at the street below a rectangle cover plate which requires a special wrench to close but I used a make-shift tool out of a Crescent wrench and screw driver.


PVC gets brittle with age even underground away from the sun so I had to cut back a large
section to get to more sound material. Up North the pipe would be below the frost line and a car wouldn't have bothered it.
A trip to that big orange box store for a section of 1" PVC, two sleeves and new cement/ primer, more digging and the new splice is holding before the sun got me.