Leak

Rob, G, and excavator man having fun with dirt. And roots. Mostly roots.

A neighbor noticed a small stream of water running down the gutter that seemed to be coming from my neighbor's house. A little investigating revealed that an area of about 10 to 20 square yards of ground was thoroughly saturated, but no obvious evidence of the source. There had been a tree on my side of the line, not too far from the meter, and adjacent to a an irrigation control box, which it had crushed to unusable. Since my portion of the area had so many suspects, I decided we would excavate to remove the problems (roots, old, unused pipes and fittings). Once we had done that we should have a better view of the situation and might be able to find the leak, and this indeed proved to be the case.

The Culprit
Note the cracks in the flats just below the threaded portion.

Once the trackhoe had pulled out the bulk of the roots, it didn't take too much more work to uncover the leak, which turned out to be this plastic fitting that connects the plastic water line running to the house to the copper line coming from the meter. It appears that after the line was connected, either someone stepped on the line, or poorly packed earth settled and pushed the line down. In any case, it put a strain on this fitting, and after 20 years it finally cracked.


Changing Buckets on the Yanmar Mini Excavator
Excavator man brought three buckets with him. He changed buckets a couple of times. I was surprised how quick he was, but then I thought he had been pushing and pulling pins. It wasn't until he was packing up to leave that I saw that the machine has a clamp on the end that engages two pins on the bucket, making changing buckets quick and easy.

This whole project is probably going to run between $500 and $1000.