I first noticed on Wednesday afternoon that I had low water pressure. I thought to myself, "surely the City of Lewiston is flushing out some water lines." Well, the pressure was still low after dinner so I walked around my yard, turned the sprinklers on, scoped out all the corners of my basement, and could find no obvious evidence of water leaking. There was not enough water pressure to pop up the sprinklers, so I knew something was seriously wrong. But was it my sprinkler system or the city's water meter, or the line from the meter to my house??? I called John and he told me to call the city first and they could probably find out where it was leaking.
Sure enough, on Thursday morning, it didn't take long for the city worker to determine there was a leak. "Your water meter is spinning out of control," he told me. He said he was going to get another employee to help him determine where it was. By the time he called me back in less than an hour, he said, "we found your leak and your son in law, John, was here and he's going to fix it for you." So, I went about my business making Raspberry popcorn all morning, just checking in at home around 1:00 PM, only to discover John had taken the day off to dig a big hole and repair the leak in an old galvanized pipe.
It was over 100 degrees so I thought it was quite clever of John to remember the canopy! I swear he had a dig a hole deeper than himself to repair the leak. I probably should find out about replacing the whole line because it's been faithful for over 70 years, but can't last forever!! I don't want to worry about the galvanized pipe giving out while I'm on my next vacation, or in the middle of winter. Stay tuned....
Thursday night I ran the sprinkler through the entire cycle and again on Friday morning, as usual. Good thing because nothing got watered on Saturday morning. What the???? I think my Toro Vision II controller is dead - it must be 15-20 years old. I found the manual online and it was guaranteed for kist two years. I tested the outlet, even bought some new fuses, but the little red lights refuse to light up. I guess it's tired and worn out.
So today, my yard looks like this... I think John did a marvelous job considering the heat, paying attention to the sprinkler lines, and cutting the sod and then patching it back together.
No more perfect grass... I actually had to get out the water hose and sprinkle it the old fashioned way. My lord, we are so spoiled by our automatic sprinkler systems! It takes a lot of energy to haul the hoses around and get the sprinkler just right!
And tomorrow morning I'm calling Clearwater Sprinkler and telling them to install a new controller!
I actually feel grateful for many things as the week enfolded. The main line leak happened during the week, I was home, and John overheard his city co-workers discussing my problem on the radio. I'm grateful the ground had been soaked by the galvanized pipe leak and needed very little water over the weekend. And the temperature is much cooler today so I'm quite certain everything will survive until a new clock is installed.
For reasons unknown to me i still persist with soaker hoses rather than getting pop up sprinklers installed.
ReplyDelete