The problem presented itself as an odd moment. I heard the dog drinking and knew that there’s not SUPPOSED to be water where she was. 1 However…it did not immediately click that I should go up the hill and check on it. I assumed she’d found one of Mama’s many plant pots full of water and went on with the art of weedeater wielding.
Much later that evening, I realized I’d never gone up the hill to check it out. No better time than before the sun drops, so off I went.
The dog was drinking out of a foot-deep freshwater manmade spring.
Say whuuuuut??!!??
Yeah, you read that right. Foot-deep. Freshwater. Manmade. Spring.
Heavy, heavy sigh. Scoop the water out of the hole and see what we’re dealing with.
Joy of joys. A pregnant pipe splice. Let’s clear the gunk away, shallwe? After rinsing the mud off and cutting through
this much tape, we’re left with this:
Which, honestly? was a relief to find. The pipe had truly burst – it wasn’t one of Daddy’s Engineering Projects. After draining the rest of the water out of the hole, the repair looked to be a simple one – 3/4″ coupling, a few feet of pipe, new 3/4″ x 1″ coupling, teflon tape and a screwdriver (to tighten the clamps down with).
Simple on paper. In reality, the couplings didn’t want to seat, I couldn’t get the pipe clamps tight enough and I asked Mama more than once to just call a plumber and let me move on with my life. I did everything right, I know I did…but the water kept spewing out.
There were four separate trips to Lowe’s AND Farmer’s Hardware stores. Lowe’s had the pipe and Farmer’s had the couplings.
I built the thing from the top down first – 3/4 inline coupler to pipe to 3/4 x 1″ adapter. It leaked.
I pulled it apart and cut another section of pipe. Rewrapped the coupler in an OBSCENE amount of teflon tape and built it again.
Still leaking.
I built the thing from the bottom up – 3/4 coupler to pipe to 1″ x 34″ adapter.
Yup, you guessed it. More leaking.
It was Mama’s (Don’t call him Boyfriend, that word is too juvenile) who called attention to The Daily Duuuuuh:
Although the pipe clamps have a slot for a screwdriver, they also work REALLY well with a socket wrench.
- by the rope swing on top of the bank [↩]