Water, Water Everywhere

The theme of the past two days seems to be water.

Rick and I have made a habit of taking at least one if not two walks a day around our neighborhood to get a little exercise.  Yesterday as we headed south from our house, we were looking at the new curb and gutters that had been installed that day.  (Hopefully we will have a completely new street within in the next couple of weeks.)  We looked at the new gutter at the south border of our property, and I noticed what appeared to be a small hole in the mini-storm sewer pipe that was uncovered when the construction company removed the old curb and asphalt.  "Look," I said to Rick, "They hit the drain pipe."

We both were surprised that the top of the drain pipe (which is probably the air chamber for the pipe) was so near the surface of the ground.  Rick examined the pipe further by pulling away the dirt by the hole that I saw.  What he uncovered really shocked us.  The contractor did not just "ding" the pipe a little, resulting in the approximately 1" high by 2" long hole that I originally saw.  Instead, with the piled dirt in front of it removed, we found a 1" by about 6 - 7" gash through most of the pipe! "This is a problem," Rick said.

While the pipe actually carries the sump pump water away from the neighbor's house rather than our house, we still were not happy with what we saw.  First, the neighbor is a recently widowed woman who is renting the house.  She does not need flood water in her basement if dirt is allowed to fall into the pipe and plug the drainage system.  Secondly, she is downstream from us, so if her section of the pipe gets plugged, our section will soon follow.  We ALSO do not need a flooded basement this winter.

The gaping hole in the pipe just above the dirt
was not a welcome sight!

We called the City to report the problem and then went on our walk.  About 45 minutes later, someone was at the pipe, talking on a phone, taking pictures.  Since we reported the problem to the City, we hope that the pipe will have to be repaired, inspected, and approved before the contractor can just come back in a backfill the hole.

That was our first encounter with a (potential) water problem.

This morning I awoke at the usual time, ate breakfast, used the bathroom, and then stepped into the shower.  When I stepped out of the shower, I noticed that I still could hear water running. Oh-oh.  Running water in our house is NEVER a good sign.  As I dried off, I discovered that the running water was coming from the toilet that was continually trying to fill the bowl as the water drained away.

I called Rick up from the exercise room where he was working out on the stationary bike, and he found that a plastic piece of the internal mechanism had broken off. He called Kohler to see if they could send us a free replacement part, but they told us that the toilet only had a one-year warranty.  They gave us the part number, and Rick was able to locate it online as available at our neighborhood Home Depot.  Great! I wasn't even dressed yet and already was rushed to get to my favorite store...

Thankfully, my wonderful husband is good with plumbing, so in a short time, he had replaced the broken part and the toilet stopped draining water (and my money) from its bowl.  We discovered, however, that the shut-off valve to this toilet was probably original to the house.  That part, while doing its job right now, also will need our attention.

That was our second encounter with a water problem.

Tonight after dinner we ventured out for our usual evening walk.  We kept an eye on the sky as showers were predicted for later this evening.  One dark cloud loomed overhead, but we could see blue skies in the distance beyond that dark cloud.  We were approximately eight blocks from our house when the cloud decided that it would dump its rain before it moved onward.  The few sprinkles quickly morphed into a pretty steady rain which then transformed into a fairly hard downpour.

By the time we aerobically walked home, we both were more than damp.  That was our third encounter with a water problem.  This problem, however, had a bonus.  The blue sky behind the cloud was still blasting the earth with sunlight, so as we reached our front yard, we were rewarded with a beautiful rainbow.  At least this problem was both short-lived and colorful in the end.