Rusty Pipe Dream House

A wise electrician once told me, “there’s only two things you need to know about plumbing: 1. Crap runs downhill, and 2. Don’t lick your fingers.”

And a wise couple (who toured our five-year, uncompleted remodeling project, well, five years ago) said, “This house looks like a lot of work; you’ll want to consider that before you buy it.”

At least we listened to the wise electrician.

We love a lot of things about our house:

1. A young deer named Scruffy. My wife and son love him so much they plant an annual salad bar just for him and his friends.

2. Hummingbirds. We get to watch some serious dogfights above our front patio. And these are hardcore, high-altitude hummers, nothing like the soft, city dwellers in the valley below.

3. Spring. When the scrub oak and maples and mulberry trees all leaf out, we feel removed from the city, enveloped in our own verdant patch of forest (sans Ewoks).

4. Location. We live just down the street from a legendary football coach. He’s our Sunday School president. And it’s just over a mile to work, allowing us to walk, bike, or simply enjoy our fuel savings as we coast down to our jobs. It feels like we are at Sundance but town is just a short scrub jay's flight away.

But here’s where the plumbing (and some hate) comes in. (And what may have prompted me to watch a movie about a man who crawled through an underground pipe to escape from prison . . . see previous post.)

We got a letter from the city saying we had used an excessive amount of water this last month and that we likely had a leak on our side of the water meter (meaning, “your problem, not ours”). So after ruling out water sources in the house, I twisted the shutoff, walked out to the meter and watched as it continued to creep steadily along. Leaky line, yay. So we got a couple of bids, then went with the guy that seemed more likely to save a few of our scrub oaks rather than the one who was ready to bulldoze an eight-foot swath from our mailbox all the way to our front door. (In the end, it was bad but could have been much worse.)

Short story long, they pulled out the old line, a piece of rusty galvanized junk, then discovered three repair patches. Everyone we had talked to had emphatically expressed that you do not repair a leaky line, you replace it. Seems a pipe with one leak will probably leak again and soon. Three patches. I almost said a swear when I found out. If only such a thing were lawful in this state, I might have.

Anyway, thousands and thousands of dollars later (goodbye Hawaii, hello Ramen) we have a dark blue pipe running through our yard, some thick cement-like mud pancaked (now dry) on our street and neighbor’s driveway, and a fashionable drywall door in our storage room. Our water pressure is now reduced so our appliances don’t explode, but it is a definite adjustment when you are used to faster water.

One more thing I guess that we never expected to repair. At least we can sleep better at night knowing that we are piping water into our house instead of into the ground.

Now we only have to think about retaining walls . . . oh, and a fireplace treatment . . . and the deck . . . expanding the carport shed . . . . I guess we can rest when we are dead.