Side Note – March 9, 2012: This was supposed to be posted about 9 months ago, so I haven’t bothered to change the tense in the wording below. Also as of this date, there still aren’t any planters.

So here is a totally random occurrence. My neighbor was down in his basement, and he heard a hissing noise coming from the water meter area. It turns out that the galvanized pipe that brings water into his house was corroded at the shutoff valve and slowly leaking. A plumber was called in, to diagnose the situation and as soon as the plumber touched the pipe, it starting gushing water (so typical).

With water rushing into his basement, my neighbor called up the water company, to hurry up and shut off his water, so that his basement doesn’t flood. The water works ended up coming out and shutting off the water. With the final solution being, that he needed a new water line run to his house.

I’ve had to replace a water line before at one of my other houses, and it is no fun…… except for the plumber who collects the fee.

So as you can see from the pictures, they really had to dig up his yard to run the new copper water main. But with a new copper line in place, that will more than likely be the last water line run to that house for at least 100 years.

Below, you can see the different phases of the dig-out, in a little bit of a before and after montage.

And on kind of an interesting side note. When I was taking with my neighbor, he has no plans to replace any of the grass that was torn out. So what is he going to do instead? He said that he was going to put in raised planter beds for a vegetable garden on the side of the house. Personally I think that it’s a good idea, we’ll just see if he actually does it.