Just Our Luck

We had only been in our new house 2 days, 2 DAYS, when we heard water running. Zane, being the handy man that he is, searched and searched and searched the basement for another shut-off valve (other than the main shut-off valve). No such luck. Zane looked out the front door and saw a HUGE lake on our front lawn. Great, just GREAT! He called the city, of course it was after hours and the only city worker's number Zane had, his father passed away that morning and hasn't been working. Bless his heart, he came over anyway to see what he could do. After they had pumped the water out of the meter hole, they found the shut-off valve at the meter and shut our water off. The water was officially shut off at 8:30pm.

So, yesterday morning, we had a lot of blue stakes knocking at the door wanting to know where this or that was. Finally, the real work started of digging and finding where the break was at.

Pumping the "lake" off our front lawn. Don't you just love construction workers and how they "always" look so busy just standing around and watching?

As per my last post, you all know just how much Hunter LOVES tractors. He was in his element watching the backhoe out our front window. Hunter was itching to go out there, so Zane FINALLY came and got him and took him out to watch the backhoe dig.

Not only was Hunter in his element, but Zane was as well. When we lived in St. George, Zane did work similar to this. He had to be out there and "help where he could". There was a few times when they needed his assistance, but for the most part, he stood around like he is doing in most of these pictures. Gosh, I LOVE him so much! He is SO funny!

While the city workers were digging, they found and caught a fiber optic cable and severed it. Yeah, that was the telephone line. There are 9 circuits on this line and once they got it fixed, only 3 of the circuits were working. Nope, it wasn't blue staked. The guy from Gtelco that came to blue stake the line said the line was on the other side of the street and sprayed in paint Gtelco "OK". If you look across the street to the east, there is a phone box right there, DUH.

The city workers FINALLY found the source of the great lake on our front lawn. The pipe from the road to our meter had been rubbing against a rock for who knows how long, and the friction caused a hole in the pipe. Here are the city workers working on pulling out the broken pipe and putting in the new pipe. At 4:30pm, we officially had water. YEAH!!!!!! The water was so brown and dirty and FULL of dirt. I had to turn all the taps on in the house and let them run to get all the dirt and yucky brown whatever out of it.

The two guys in the hole are from the telephone company. After watching them fix the broken line, I am not surprised it was severed, they took a 6 foot piece of fiber optic cable and spliced it together on the ends of the severed cable, then wrapped the remaining 5 1/2 feet of cable in a ball and tucked it into the dirt.

Anyway, we FINALLY have water. I can do my dishes, bathe my kids, drink water, cook dinner for my kids and most important, shower! I always took having water for granted until I didn't have it for a day. Not very easy and not very fun, especially with two little kids.