Water Leak!

Yesterday, I was sitting at my desk having just emailed BG a belated Christmas gift when the phone rang. I fully expected that it was here telling me thanks, how great it was and all that stuff. The call was from BG, but she was not telling me thanks. Instead, she was very upset at our $455 water bill!

Immediately, my thoughts raced to the toilet in the master bathroom. The fill valve has been slowly failing. I thought perhaps it had failed and was running water through the overflow pipe and down the drain. I had her run back there to check it. NOT! I really didn't think so either. We would have heard the water running or dripping into the drain. We decided to call the City to see if there was some kind of error. BG made the call.

The City was responsive, sending a water guy out rather quickly to check the meter. He showed up, opening the box and watched the meter spin. "do you have any water running in the house?" he asked. "No, nothing," was the answer. "Well, you've got a leak, and a bad one," came the reply. He immediately opened the sprinkler system valve box adjacent to the water meter box. It was full of water. So, he shut off the sprinkler line. No change. He siphoned out the valve box and watched it fill again. He shut off the water.

"Well, your leak is very near here. I think its right here between the two valve boxes." He shut off the water at the meter and things settled down. BG called me to let me know what they had found. I knew we couldn't go very long without water and I wasn't about to call a plumber, so I headed home. I only had about three hours of daylight left.

When I got here, I changed and headed out to the boxes with a couple of shovels, one with a spade point and one without. I cut off the grass and set it aside and continued to dig. The clayey soil was wet, heavy and sticky. It took the better part of an hour to get the hole of a sufficient size to allow repair work. I had BG take some pictures to document the process. Then it was off to Home Depot.

Like all things DIY, it was not as simple as running to the store, finding exactly what you need and hooking it up. No, they never have exactly what you need, so improvisation is required. I found the required parts and pieces, checked out and raced home, daylight was fading fast.

Once I got back to the house, things proceeded with speed. I measured and cut the existing pipe to allow the new couplings to be installed. I cleaned the pipes where new fittings were to be installed and planned the sequence of the installation.

First, I installed a coupler from the downstream side to the location of the new tee. The pipe was too short on that side to install the repair coupling and I did not want to male the hole any larger. Next, I measured the pipe to be removed on the meter side so that the repair coupling cound be installed. That would be the last piece to put in place. I glued all the adapters together and installed the tee to the sprinkler system and connected to the downstream side. All that remained was the repair coupling. It went in just fine. It was almost dark.

The glue required a two hour curing time at 60 degrees. Since it was not that warm, I retrieved a halogen work light from the shop and put it in the hole. It warmed up the pipes well. It was time to cook dinner.

After dinner and some talking, it was time to check the installation. We all needed to use the bathroom by now, and I was really hoping for no leaks. And that's just what I found! I'll close up the hole tomorrow.

We documented the process and the repair well. The City has promised us a Leak Discount on the bill. We'll see how much that amounts to, but anything will help. They anticipate another large bill next month too. We lost over 10,000 gal. of water.

Maybe the guard toad we found in the valve box will do his job and alert us next time!