This was supposed to be a big weekend for the Mustang. I had grand plans to get the starter and enough of the electrical system installed to be able to turn the key and have the engine turn over. The plan was for this to happen on Sunday.
Saturday’s plan was to fix the small pothole in the driveway where the new shop (which has been ordered) is going to be soon. If you remember, my wife very cleverly parlayed the my purchase of the Mustang into new living quarters. These living quarters have space for a nice two-car shop:
However, if you look closely at that picture, you’ll see a small circular area in the middle left that’s out of place. Zooming in a little bit shows a pothole:
And potholes just won’t do in my new shop.
So I faithfully googled how to fix up asphalt, rented the very expensive tool (tm) (a-now-on-my-Christmas-list Makita demolition hammer) and got to work.
And then this:
I’ll point out to those of you unfamiliar with the comparative densities of water and asphalt that asphalt does not float. Cool as it may be, my driveway does not contain a subterranean ocean.
This meant two things:
- We had identified running water as the cause of the pot hole
- The pothole was now the least of my concerns
The rest of the day didn’t get any better. It turned out the the water coming into the hole was coming from our metered city water system and not the irrigation line. This meant that not only did I have a pot hole, I was paying dearly for the privilege of continually supplying the water that made it. Swell.
Asphalt being asphalt, it wasn’t a straightforward task to identify the cause of the leak. First we tried digging up the asphalt around a spigot close to the leak. The spigot was dry as a bone, but the line to it was so close that it had to be the culprit. Unfortunately, much of the line was under the driveway and we didn’t know where it came from.
Our next step was to dig up a sprinkler in the middle of the lawn hoping it was plumbed in series with the spigot. Nope.
We then dug up a spigot on the other side of the yard hoping it was either plumbed in series or would give a clue as to where the main line was. Nope and nope.
We then ran a chalk line from the driveway spigot to two of what we thought were the most likely points the source line to come in. We then dug an eight inch by 17 inch trench along the driveway hoping to find the line.
We found a line.
It was the wrong one.
I now know how far the water line for zone 1 of my irrigation system goes. It goes right to where the demolition hammer cut it. Have I mentioned I hate plumbing?
Somewhere in that process I called my insurance company thinking we’d have to dig up half the driveway up to find the leak.
Before moving on to how things got worse, here’s a quick diagram of our property for reference:
With light waning, we tried digging one last desperation trench by the spigot on the top right of the map above hoping to find its source line. After about 20 minutes, we had a lead! The spigot’s source line went into a T-junction. This T-junction had another line going off to where we think the main water line to the house is and another going off in the direction of the other spigots!
Woohoo! It’s was only 8:30 and getting dark so what could go wrong? We turned the water off at the street and cut what we thought was the main line.
However, what we thought was the source line was just another line to somewhere else and the line we had hoped ran to the spigots was rapidly filling our desperation trench with the remaining water in the line from the street.
Did you know The Home Depot is open until 10 on Saturday evenings? Neither did I until last night when I found out none of my at least 5 dozen sprinkler parts would cap the line.
Cue dramatic reality show voice-over: Unless they can work underwater to get the lines patched, they’ll be without water until the following day!
To cut this already embarrassingly long blog post short, we were able to cap the line – somewhere in the neighborhood of 10:30 at night.
We went to bed thinking we’d either have to wait for the insurance adjuster or tear up the driveway and/or yard even more on Sunday. I didn’t sleep well.
And then Sunday morning happened.
I woke up in a crummy mood, got the kids ready to go and brooded on the couch for a while. When I was ready to face my driveway I went outside to gather tools and decide which of the bad options I was going to choose to follow that day.
THE WATER WAS GONE
As in…totally not there anymore – and not flowing into the pothole either. More than a few double takes later I couldn’t help myself but to:
After a few minutes of jubilation, I decided to see why the water wasn’t there. Some sleuthing determined that our original guess for how the system was plumbed was slightly off:
The line we capped (thinking it was the source to just the spigots on the left) was actually the source line to all of the spigots. The random water line that headed away from ever.other.spigot.on.the.property was actually the source line that fed the spigot with the leak as well as the spigot at the top left as well.
Unsurprisingly my outlook on life improved. McDonald’s breakfasts for everyone!
Sadly, that still didn’t mean I got to work on the Mustang today. My wife and I spent the entire day cleaning up the mess we made on Saturday.
And yes, we did eventually get around to patching the pothole:
The Mustang Restoration 