The Nastiness In Our Yard

It was just a little hole like you would step in and roll your ankle when we bought the house. It kept growing, but we didn't think much of it because it never filled with water. I just thought it was a weird sink-hole. Every once in a while I'd put the leftover dirt in it that I had after filling the flower beds, but that's about it.

Recently it began filling up with water. I thought it was from having our sprinklers on when we got all that rain a while back. It had always drained in the past. But this time it didn't drain.

And it quit raining.

And there was still water in it.

And we turned the sprinklers off.

And there was still water(?) in it.

And then the smell ...

So we called Mr. Rooter himself. The guy who came had done the plumbing on the houses in our neighborhood from the slab up, but not underground. He said he had been back several times since to fix underground issues. Nice.

He pumped the, uh ... "water" ... out and then dug out the rest of the sludge. Wow. Poor man. Poor, poor man.

The hole ended up being about 3 feet in diameter and about 2 1/2 feet deep.

He found the sprinkler line, which ran above the sewer line.

Then he found the sewer pipe. Well, he found part of it. After digging another 6 inches down, he found the other part that was supposed to be stuck to the first part.

See? Skinny sprinkler pipe on top. Big sewer line underneath. You can't even see the lower pipe that should be to the left of the upper sewer pipe. The hole had filled back up that much when I took the picture a few minutes after digging it up.

Not cool. Not cool at all.

He then tells us that he'll have to come back with a tractor and dig back to our driveway, and hopefully no further, to try to pull up the lower pipe to the level of the higher one and try to reconnect it.

But he'd have to call his boss so he could come take a look at it and give us an estimate.

So the boss comes and says that it's too close to the other lines to use a tractor, so they're going to have to dig it back by hand.

Not poor, poor man anymore! Rich, rich man!

The earliest they can come out to fix it is Wednesday or Thursday.

I have a lot to be thankful for (as I grip the sides of my chair and grit my teeth and force a smile):

• A good, reliable plumber was at our house three hours after we called them.
• They treated us with respect; not like stupid people to take advantage of.
• They didn't charge us a service charge for today.
• I could talk to my dad, who just happens to be a master plumber in Dallas, about the whole thing and he reassured me that they were doing the right thing.
• We can still use our water. Hey, it's been like this for 3 years. What's another few days going to do?
• They won't have to dig up our driveway. Good. I like to park in our garage.
• We recently looked at our budget, went to the envelope system and had a cushion the size of one house payment. It going to cost about one house payment. We won't have to go into more debt to pay for the fix. And we'll work hard to get our cushion back.
• We're having steak for supper that I got for $2.47/lb today.

It's all going to be just fine. I didn't even cry. On the outside.