jimmy cracked pipe, and i dont care
tommyIt was around 11am on Saturday. I was sitting in the living room, still trying to wake up after another great gig on Friday night. Wifey came running in from the garage: “I think the washer is broken.”
I got up and stumbled out to the laundry area. Wifey said she just opened the lid, and the water slowed down. “See?” she pointed. “The water is usually coming out much faster than that.” And reaching inside up through the diminished waterfall, “I can’t feel anything blocking it here. Oh, don’t tell me we need a new washing machine.”
I wasn’t gonna tell her anything of the sort. Discussions involving hundreds of dollars is nothing to be avoided, but certainly needs more planning than “Wake up! There’s a problem!”
Now, I’m not much a handyman, and I’m seriously debilitated in the mornings. So, to give me a few minutes to consider the possibilities (read: stall for time), I slowly walked over and opened the garage door. It was a beautiful, bright day with a comfortable breeze. I surveyed the neighborhood, and down the street I saw a couple hundred bucks being put back into my wallet.
About a block away, water was gushing out into the road at an incredible rate. Meanwhile, a county worker was out in front of my yard with a can of spray paint and a handful of flags. I asked him, “What are you up to?” He never broke his stride marking with paint, raising tiny flags, and moving along: “I broke the water main.”
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Remember when Verizon first started installing FIOS cable around here? As an introduction to each neighborhood, they would tear up sewer lines, break water mains, and all sorts of mayhem. Then the county got tired of going to fix up these screw-ups and told Verizon to knock it off.
Well, we haven’t heard much about many mishaps since then. Before Verizon even gets started now, the county makes sure everything is marked well so Verizon can steer clear of mishaps. It seems they have the installation down to a science. Sorta.
On a recent Saturday, Hillsborough County had an employee out in the neighborhood to mark the sewer and water lines. He used some kind of scanning device to find the pipes, then he paints the ground, and puts up a tiny flag. Blue flags & paint is for water, while green is used for sewer.
But apparently the guy had trouble locating the water line right next to a telephone pole. In order to properly identify the location of the line, he decided to stick a crowbar in the ground, hoping to come in contact with it. And he did.
The thirty year old water main busted, and the neighborhood now had water gushing out into a couple driveways, the street, and making an ever-wider, ever deeper hole directly next to that concrete power pole.
But it doesn’t really matter. Verizon is finally getting to the neighborhood, and there is much joy, even from the guy with a new eight foot hole in his front yard.
Tags: brandon, county, tampa, utilities
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