Tackle It Tuesday

All I was trying to do was prepare a new area of the soil for planting some Armenian cucumbers. I was using a pick-ax, need I say more... Well, okay I'll say more. Sure enough I realized I'd hit a water pipe as a geiser 12 feet high sprayed all over my yard. This event stopped me from working on project #1 and now I had to figure out what to do about the unexpected project #2.

Mostly there are so many benefits to living in a home that's been lived in before, except for when each owner has done something to the land that the following owners are never made aware of until things like this happen. So obviously it was unbeknownst to me that there were pipes so close to the surface near the patio in my backyard.

Anyway, a quick call to my dad, turning off the water to the house, and seeing that it was a pvc pipe (which who what it's purpose was) made it a quick fix. My dad fixing things is like watching McGiver at work. He even used bread to dry up the leaking pipe so he could get glue in there to fit a connecting piece to it. We decided to put a plug on it until we figure out what we could use it for in the future.

Voila! It was fixed. No more leak, so we turned on the water to the house. Checked it again, still no leak - great news. So my day left, on his way out of town actually.

But wait! The story doesn't end there. So hubby got home from work as I was telling him all that had happened. Showed him the pipe, still no leak. And then increased the water pressure seeing that I had not turned the water on enough. So we went about other chores for a little while.

A few minutes later we remembered to check the pipe again, and my backyard was flooded! Worse than it ever was, I couldn't believe my eyes. Because this time it wasn't a spray, instead it was a full gush of water from where the plug has blown clear across the yard. And then I realized we had rushed the drying process before turning on the water.

Well, unlike my dad, hubby and I are still new at collecting the necessary materials to do emergency fix-its around the home. So following the steps my dad had taken, we turned off the water to the home, went to the hardware store for some pipe glue, came back, unloaded buckets of the flooded water from the area, used some more bread to stop and dry the leak, attached and glued the plug as before.

And this time we waited a full two hours before turning the water back on. Constantly checking on leaks. We turned the water back on and kept checking for leaks for 12 more hours out of paranoia. Success:)

A few days later I planted my desparate little Armenian cucumber plants. They look alittle pathetic now, but I hope to share a success story about them too.

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