Day 15: Stay Hopeful

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Day 15 of Quarantine: Stay Open

Total cases (US): 163788

Total deaths(US): 3141

Hello, Ava’s Audience! It is day 15 of coronacation and Ava is letting me make a guest appearance so I can give you my perspective of her writing entry for last weekend. A few months ago before we ventured to Florida (so thankful we took that break) we had noticed some water by our frost-free spigot next to our little greenhouse. It was freezing here in Colorado so I thought the water was caused by the dripping spigot. The short term fix was to cap it and wrap it with heat tape and insulation. I contemplated and thought it was best to permanently fix with on a sunny day. Then late last Friday, Nancy texted me, “big water problem!” I immediately called GJ pipe and they set out the part since I couldn’t make it there by 4:30 pm. I didn’t get home until after 6:00 pm and since I have been remodeling Ava’s bathroom, painting the main floor ceilings, walls, and fixing the dishwasher I had plenty to do and planned on addressing the pipe in the morning. I turned on my podcast and started painting and Nancy texted our tenant the water would be off tomorrow between 11-3 which would give me plenty of time to complete the task. I woke up early Saturday morning and resumed painting while I was waiting for it to warm up outside. I was excited because I had just purchased a discount punch card for labor from Reed Garrison. They were usually $100 for 10 hours of labor but he was running a special for 25% off. Reed and I put on our work clothes and headed down to address the water problem. As we started to dig a small hole with the backhoe, the first swipe revealed a pipe with water spewing out the top. “Hey, Reed!” I exclaimed. “How lucky we are! We found the leak!.” I got off the tractor to examine the find. We ran to Ace Hardware to get a cap. At Ace, the lady greeted me through a crack of the sliding door but wouldn’t let me in. She asked, “You know the procedure right?” I said encouragingly, “No but I called to make sure I can get this part.” She informed me there was no shopping around and I could only be in there 5 minutes. She would also only let one person in at a time so I had to wait until the previous customer exited. We went back home with our treasure and capped the pipe. All is well! Reed ran up to turn on the water and the cap held… hooray! Oh no, after a few minutes of satisfaction I noticed there was water coming up at a more rapid pace from the ground. I yelled to Reed to turn off the water and began to dig more and investigate. We dug with a small shove and sucked water for the next 6 hours with a small shop vac. In the mud flinging mess, I cut the wire to our tenant's internet but that was the least of my worries. I could easily repair that and my concern was not the network being down… it was the water being down. The hole was now so deep that our neighbor came out and had an OSHA concern. As I looked up at Randy, I said, “No problem, if I am buried alive this all will be over.” With my small shovel, I finally exposed the last of the pipes. Another neighbor came up that owns a plumbing company and we capped the other leak. By 7 pm my helpers had all gone in and it was freezing, snowing, and my hands were numb. I told Reed to turn on the water one more time since I was optimistic the 2nd cap would work. Although it was too dark, I went down the hole and determined there was yet another leak coming from the last foot between the well casing and our exposed pipe. Too late, too dark and too cold to deal with it, I was done. It took me 1/2 an hour to cover up the hole with insulating blankets and then I cleaned up, and tried to exhale and went to bed. Early Sunday morning, I discouragingly looked at the 8-foot hole filled to the brim with water and it was running rapidly into my tenant's driveway. Nancy grabbed the garden hose and I put my mouth to the one end and started sipping it like a straw sucking out the ocean. The parts store was closed so I went back to painting and made a pickleball court with my family. We went all day without water and only turned it on for evening showers and cooking. Monday morning the hole was empty after hours of siphoning. Mud had covered all of the pipes so I started clearing the mud from the large hole. After a few hours, I had now found a new crack in a pipe feeding from the well. The crack was right at the well casing. I couldn’t move any of the pipes or the well so I decided I would call my helper at Aqua tech. I sent Dan a few pics and we chatted about what it would take to solve. I am fortunate that he could fit me in and he canceled a couple of service calls that were not as urgent. Dan drove from Grand Junction which is approximately 90 minutes away and as I dug deeper into the hole. Dan would be able to get large wrenches in place around the piping. After some engineering on-site, I began holding the tarp over Dan’s head since the weather was moving in and it began sleeting. Finally, it was repaired and I had water without leaks. Life is good again! I am not going to fill the hole back up until it has a few days to dry out. I also need to fill and pack with proper material around the new pipe prior to backfilling with dirt. I cleaned up and went to work in Edwards at 2:30 pm Monday 😀 I thought life on the farm was kind of laid back, but there is nothing this old country boy can’t hack…………. I will say that things like this make me appreciate my great job that I usually enjoy and the endless hours of painting with my headphones, podcasts, and music really start to look pretty good. I am a little bummed the dishwasher is making a weird sound but I know the pipes don’t go down 8 feet so it will all be good.

Stay hopeful,

Johnny G