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which_chickAs I have previously discussed, I get crystal clear mountain spring water from, yes, a spring up on the mountain. This is not a public, treated water system and sometimes there are... newt issues. This was not a newt issue.
I was doing some light yard-readying-for-winter stuff last weekend and I walked by the water pit in my yard only to notice it going audibly PSSSSSSSHHHHH, which is not a good noise for a water pit to be making. Any noise a water pit makes is probably not good.
The water pit is a 2' plastic culvert on end in the yard with a little hat roof to keep leaves and critters out. Inside the water pit is the water line to my house. And, turns out, a leak that was making the PSSSSSSSHHHHH noise. Now, you've heard me previously reference cold weather and snow, so I'm sure you're there going "How can you hear the water pipe going PSSSSSSSHHHHH if it's all underground so that it doesn't freeze?" It's pretty loud and around my house ambiently, things are fairly quiet. Also eventually the leaking water will kind of blast away all the dirt and you can hear it better.
I've felt for most of the (dry) summer that the water tank on the hill was emptying too rapidly and maybe this leak was the root cause of all of that.
So anyway, I left it leak for the week because this was clearly going to be A Project and I saved it for this weekend. I enlisted Brother the Elder and his sprog, because misery loves company, and we got to work on Saturday morning.
Y'know, you always think with these projects that you can get them done minimally. "Oh, I can just dig up a little bit of the pipe, we don't need to do some huge-ass excavation, that will not be necessary." (Spoiler alert: It will be necessary.)
So we tried that first. It didn't work. I went to the hardware store three times on Saturday and it didn't work. We finally got the pipe together sorta but it still leaked for unknown reasons. However it was around 2 PM and I was *done* with playing in the muddy pit at that point so we resolved to table it for the next day. Everybody needed to go eat and get cleaned up and be somewhere that was not a muddy pit, and honestly sometimes "Try again tomorrow" is 100% the correct answer.
Helper sprog was disappointed that "Try again tomorrow" was the answer, but the alternative is, like "Allow the water system to leak like hell all winter long and then you still have to dig the damn thing up in the spring and also it'll be worse by then because leaks do not heal themselves." I think he was hoping for something like We give up and hire a professional with a backhoe... and that is indeed an option but the professional with the backhoe costs like five hundred dollars and two days in a muddy pit is way cheaper than five hundred dollars plus also it's good for youngsters to learn which end of a shovel to hold.
The water line (and partly this is for my reference) is black poly pipe, 2" that necks down to 1.25" that necks down to 1". These dimensions are not readily apparent until you have driven to the hardware and bought the wrong size pipe and the wrong size fittings and brought them home and tried to install them. Seriously, rage quitting was considered multiple times on Saturday before we got to 2 PM.
Sunday we dug up the pit, took out the 2' piece of culvert pipe, extended the trench back another 4' on the 1" pipe side (so that there would be enough play to sink the fittings into the pipes -- these are black poly plastic pipes and they bend a little and can be moved around without breaking), hooked everything up correctly, and nothing leaked. Only one trip to the hardware, even. Yay!
As we determined while reassembling things on Sunday, the reason it had leaked on Saturday was that there was a piece of plastic torn free from the fitting that got wedged longways against the fitting and prevented the clamp from closing the water off completely. The piece of plastic got torn free from the fitting because we didn't have enough play in the pipe to line things up better. We should have just made a ginormous hole to start with.
We reset the culvert pipe and filled in the hole and then got antiskid stone to bury the pipe. At the end, it was fine.
But yeah, might as well start every buried pipe project with the understanding that you're gonna have to dig up rather a lot and you cannot possibly fix it without making a decent-sized hole. I am really resisting learning this lesson, though.
I was doing some light yard-readying-for-winter stuff last weekend and I walked by the water pit in my yard only to notice it going audibly PSSSSSSSHHHHH, which is not a good noise for a water pit to be making. Any noise a water pit makes is probably not good.
The water pit is a 2' plastic culvert on end in the yard with a little hat roof to keep leaves and critters out. Inside the water pit is the water line to my house. And, turns out, a leak that was making the PSSSSSSSHHHHH noise. Now, you've heard me previously reference cold weather and snow, so I'm sure you're there going "How can you hear the water pipe going PSSSSSSSHHHHH if it's all underground so that it doesn't freeze?" It's pretty loud and around my house ambiently, things are fairly quiet. Also eventually the leaking water will kind of blast away all the dirt and you can hear it better.
I've felt for most of the (dry) summer that the water tank on the hill was emptying too rapidly and maybe this leak was the root cause of all of that.
So anyway, I left it leak for the week because this was clearly going to be A Project and I saved it for this weekend. I enlisted Brother the Elder and his sprog, because misery loves company, and we got to work on Saturday morning.
Y'know, you always think with these projects that you can get them done minimally. "Oh, I can just dig up a little bit of the pipe, we don't need to do some huge-ass excavation, that will not be necessary." (Spoiler alert: It will be necessary.)
So we tried that first. It didn't work. I went to the hardware store three times on Saturday and it didn't work. We finally got the pipe together sorta but it still leaked for unknown reasons. However it was around 2 PM and I was *done* with playing in the muddy pit at that point so we resolved to table it for the next day. Everybody needed to go eat and get cleaned up and be somewhere that was not a muddy pit, and honestly sometimes "Try again tomorrow" is 100% the correct answer.
Helper sprog was disappointed that "Try again tomorrow" was the answer, but the alternative is, like "Allow the water system to leak like hell all winter long and then you still have to dig the damn thing up in the spring and also it'll be worse by then because leaks do not heal themselves." I think he was hoping for something like We give up and hire a professional with a backhoe... and that is indeed an option but the professional with the backhoe costs like five hundred dollars and two days in a muddy pit is way cheaper than five hundred dollars plus also it's good for youngsters to learn which end of a shovel to hold.
The water line (and partly this is for my reference) is black poly pipe, 2" that necks down to 1.25" that necks down to 1". These dimensions are not readily apparent until you have driven to the hardware and bought the wrong size pipe and the wrong size fittings and brought them home and tried to install them. Seriously, rage quitting was considered multiple times on Saturday before we got to 2 PM.
Sunday we dug up the pit, took out the 2' piece of culvert pipe, extended the trench back another 4' on the 1" pipe side (so that there would be enough play to sink the fittings into the pipes -- these are black poly plastic pipes and they bend a little and can be moved around without breaking), hooked everything up correctly, and nothing leaked. Only one trip to the hardware, even. Yay!
As we determined while reassembling things on Sunday, the reason it had leaked on Saturday was that there was a piece of plastic torn free from the fitting that got wedged longways against the fitting and prevented the clamp from closing the water off completely. The piece of plastic got torn free from the fitting because we didn't have enough play in the pipe to line things up better. We should have just made a ginormous hole to start with.
We reset the culvert pipe and filled in the hole and then got antiskid stone to bury the pipe. At the end, it was fine.
But yeah, might as well start every buried pipe project with the understanding that you're gonna have to dig up rather a lot and you cannot possibly fix it without making a decent-sized hole. I am really resisting learning this lesson, though.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-04 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-11-05 05:20 am (UTC)Though it always does seem to require digging up more than you hope.
no subject
Date: 2025-11-12 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-11-12 11:22 am (UTC)