I Have Plumbing!

The plumber finally showed up today.  Of course, the delay wasn't his, but the ones who had to give him authorization to dig up my yard.  He told me they gave him all sorts of problems.   First they told him he couldn't dig without someone there with him to make sure he didn't hit any underground stuff.

He told them that there wasn't anything near where he was going to dig, and didn't they see where his flags were?  Oh, OK, you can dig there...About 900 phone calls and many arguments later, he finally got authorization to do my plumbing work.

Daniel made it out to the house about 1:00 this afternoon.  First thing he had to do was tear up my patio.  My poor patio...

He tried to move it in one piece, but he couldn't.  It started buckling on him, so he just had to break it up.  He had this big old backhoe thing that he used to dig my yard up.  Naturally, it made noise.  A lot of noise, which freaked poor Rylea out.

This is where she ended up. 

Looking very nervous...I had to get her down, and she ain't light.  That's a 60 lb dog in my windowsill.  It wasn't easy, but I got her down, and she hid in my recliner. 

I couldn't bear to move her again, so I let her stay until Daniel was done and gone.

Once he got my yard all dug up, he was able to see what the problem was.

Back when all these houses were built, they were all on a septic system.  Sometime later, they were added to the municipal sewer system, but a lot of the houses still have old septic tanks in the back yards.  Mine did, and what had happened was the septic tank had collapsed and the sewer pipes had fallen into the old hole.  That put stress on them, causing them to break.

He replaced all the pipe from the back of the house to the fence, then used pieces of my patio to fill in the hole where the septic tank used to be.  Once he was done, he put all the dirt back into place and smoothed it all out. 

The dirt will settle, especially after it rains a few times, so I'll have to add more dirt and have it smoothed out.  I was going to have some work done on that yard anyway.

Another thing he did was to remove that tall cleanout that was in the middle of the yard and put a smaller one in.  This one is closer to the house and level with the ground, so I can hide it under a bush.

Now, I can get on with what I was doing.  I got my master bathroom all taped up and drop clothed and I'm ready to paint.

That will be my big project for tomorrow.

That, and finding someone to haul off all that concrete in my back yard...