I HATE Blue Poly!!

It's hard to imagine how such a small....tiny....little....I mean minute red triangle located on a water meter can turn something so pint size into something so large. I'll admit at first I had no idea what this petite.....three sided thing really did but it didn't take me long to figure out that it might be minuscule in size but can cause an enormous headache. For those who don't know this "yield sign shaped" thing measures the water flowing into the house. The only catch is when all the water is shut off in the house and this wienie pyramid continues to turn ....MY FRIENDS YOU HAVE A WATER MAIN LEAK SOMEWHERE FROM YOUR METER TO YOUR HOUSE!! and guess what, in the state of Washington it's not your water providers problem it's ALL yours! Here is a picture of our lovely meter that by the end of this I wish I could of taken out of the ground and threw it across the road.

I'll admit I might be a little naive on this one but I wasn't aware that when you call that toll free number before you dig they will mark all your utilities except your water. The water provider is only responsible to paint from the street to your meter....THANKS GUYS....I think Easton and Owen could of showed me where that was! Leaving me with only one solution.....start digging!!

No joke it took me about 2 whole days to dig it out and that's with my friend, Michael helping on Friday night, and Kristi helping me when she could. I couldn't believe how hard our ground was it was filled with rocks, clay, and everything else you could imagine!

Cable ANYONE!

This is house to street.

This is street to house.

I think the thing that gave me the biggest problem was nothing I did, it was what mother nature did! Every time I start to make progress it would start to rain and my ditch would completely fill up with water and I have to say it rained a lot! Every day before I could start doing anything I would have to drain the ditch with this small utility pump I got from Harbor Freight. It wasn't the biggest pump but I have to say it was the best purchase I ever made and to my surprise it wasn't that expensive!!

Here's the ditch on a rainy day!

Now by code when they did the plumbing for our house they were supposed to have copper under all concrete meaning it should of been copper from my main water shut off in the house, which is in the middle of my garage all the way to where my water main comes out under the drive way. To my surprise when we got to the drive way, there was no copper it was still blue poly and when I got a shovel length under the drive way I wasn't really surprised any more just mad!

You can see the stupid blue water line going under the driveway in this shot!

Now I tried to do everything by myself but with the rain and things out of my control I got to a point were everything I tried nothing was working so feeling a little ashamed and overwhelmed I called Brooke to see if her husband, David (Who owns Puget Sound Plumbing) could swing by and take a look! I don't know if Brooke pulled some strings or if David just happen to be in the neighborhood but he was there in no time at all!

Of course it took him all of three minutes to locate the leak, which was where the copper and the blue poly met under the driveway!

I think my favorite line I heard David say was, "We got it! You go do what you need to do and we will get it done for ya!" so I went and mowed lawn.

Him and another guy worked on it for about 2 1/2 - 3 hours and by God it was complete!

Now I'm not kidding when I say around 5 neighbors stopped by during this process and told me they had just replaced theirs not to long ago! In fact yesterday some guy knocked on my door and asked me some questions about it because his puny triangular thing was spinning as well....GOOD LUCK MY NEIGHBOR...I WISH YOU THE BEST!!

I already planted some grass seed but I still have to put mulch down on the north. It might take a little while to get back to looking normal but this is a start.

Thanks again Puget Sound Plumping for your assistance!