Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: Before the Deluge

By Jeralyn, Section Blog Related
Posted on Sat Aug 22, 2009 at 03:48:20 PM EST
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I woke up to no water and the Denver Water Department outside my front door. A pipe broke under my lawn and sidewalk and was leaking large amounts of water into the street. First they said I might have to call a plumber and repair it if turned out the leak was on the house side -- but then they determined it was on the city side. Next, big tractors with huge claws arrived and they tore up the concrete sidewalk and lawn and dug down to replace the broken pipe. [More...]

Now they are filling the hole with dirt and next week they will pour new concrete and replace the front portion of the lawn that got flooded and torn up.

Then they had me run all the faucets in the bathtubs and showers in the house to help them get air out of the lines. When you turn the faucet on, it gushes and then sputters for a while but I hope it will settle down.

I just logged on for the first time today and since midnight, there have been another 200 registered commenters/spammers from the UK, India, the Phillipines, Malaysia and Australia. (I deleted 300 yesterday.) We stripped the website line and bio section on the account user registration page so they can't put in their spam links, but that also means for now, your homepages and bios aren't showing up. We're working on a fix to be able to restore them. Now I have to individually open all of these 200 new spammer accounts to see if they posted comments, erase them and delete their accounts.

So I'm a bit overwhelmed here, thus the song, Before the Deluge.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

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Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: Before the Deluge | 13 comments (13 topical)

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Big (Yellow) Tractors (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by daring grace on Sat Aug 22, 2009 at 04:05:01 PM EST

Jerilyn,

The image of the big tractors coming to tear up your lawn reminded me of a version of Big Yellow Taxi I heard Joni Mitchell sing in concert:

After the big yellow taxi takes away her old man, the screen door slams again and a big yellow tractor comes and takes away her house and her land.

The extra verse comes about 2:03 in. Glad to hear your big tractor just came to help...

The sputters (5.00 / 1) (#5)
by TeresaInSnow2 on Sat Aug 22, 2009 at 08:57:49 PM EST

will likely dissipate soon.

We once had a long power outage, after which our water was coming out of the faucet milky (ewwww) and sputtery.

We called the water department. The checked things out and said soon everything would be fine. It was. Apparently the power outage had affected pumps, and whatever, and once the electromechanical stuff was working the water was clear. Once the bubbles were out of the line, the water was non-sputtery.

As I remember it, the water department worker told us the heart-warming story of his children who hadn't spoken to each other in years. Because of the days-long power outage during a cold spell, they'd all come to his house where he had a wood stove and gas hot water, and they'd all mended their ways...at least for awhile.

From bad things often come some good.

Aren't you glad you are renting? (5.00 / 1) (#7)
by oculus on Sat Aug 22, 2009 at 11:46:39 PM EST

Ugh. (none / 0) (#2)
by jen on Sat Aug 22, 2009 at 05:27:29 PM EST

What a day. I guess the best part is the break wasn't on the house side of whatever the dividing line is. Also good that it happened now and not in the middle of winter. Although I don't know why I think that... Best to you in getting your yard back together. And thanks for the great Jackson Browne song!

My story. (none / 0) (#3)
by Fabian on Sat Aug 22, 2009 at 06:12:56 PM EST

When I lived in the older, post WW II section of town, water line breaks in the area were an annual occurrence. If it hadn't happened to your property/rental yet, it was going to in the next ten years.

One summer, I was checking out my flowers and saw water in the street, so I checked to find out where it was coming from. (Probably another broken water line...) To my surprise, it was coming from the pavement itself, seeping steadily up from a crack. When I walked on the blacktop, the water would well up. When I jumped up and down, I got mini gushes. This was not good.

So on a Saturday afternoon, I called the city and try to track down the proper department and then convince them to come out and investigate. By Sunday they had a backhoe out, so I guess it was serious enough to get a crew out on the weekend.

My head went... (none / 0) (#4)
by weltec2 on Sat Aug 22, 2009 at 07:06:19 PM EST

your lawn + Jackson Brown -- Daryl Hannah -- ripping off mountain tops in West Virginia.

We had (none / 0) (#6)
by Natal on Sat Aug 22, 2009 at 11:32:57 PM EST

the exact thing happen to our sewer pipe this summer. Unfortunately, it was on our property and we had to pay for the excavation and plumber. The worse thing was being without a functioning toilet for three days. I didn't realize how much we depended on a functioning toilet system. We had to use the local supermarket and library facilities while it was down. Take a guess where I relieved myself in the middle of the night. The plumber told me that people are so thankful to get their bathroom back that they don't mind doing the yard cleanup themselves saving him the odious work.

Gotta love indoor plumbing... (5.00 / 1) (#9)
by kdog on Sun Aug 23, 2009 at 07:10:46 AM EST

one of mankind's greatest innovations...and you're so right that is is one convenience you really take for granted, a real "ya don't know what you got till its gone."

I'm always sayin' if there is an apocolypse, plumbers will rule the world.


I can't do a port-a-potty (none / 0) (#10)
by Militarytracy on Sun Aug 23, 2009 at 10:13:44 AM EST

I can't do outdoors. I don't know how I got here through my ancestors, I have to be a gene mutation.


: One of those things... (5.00 / 1) (#12)
by kdog on Sun Aug 23, 2009 at 10:53:02 AM EST

where it is good to be a man...the world is your urinal:)

Good lord (none / 0) (#8)
by Cream City on Sun Aug 23, 2009 at 03:22:37 AM EST

and I thought I had it bad with a perplexing day with the AT&T guy at our house, telling us that the phone line that had no dial tone turned out to not be our phone line, and he figured out that our phone line really was another phone line into our house another way (someone strung it in about the 1950s, from what we can figure), but now we are left with hardly any working phone jacks in our house. Tomorrow, we will try to figure out how to connect to the world again from a few more rooms.

At least we have running water -- and running in our pipes, not all over our lawn!

: Let ATT know you are prepared to escalate! (none / 0) (#13)
by ChiTownDenny on Sun Aug 23, 2009 at 11:22:37 AM EST

You will call the CEO and you will switch providers if the issue is not remedied in a timely manner. One issue, which is usually the responsibility of the customer, is "inside wiring". ATT can address, for a charge.

You're lucky (none / 0) (#11)
by rdandrea on Sun Aug 23, 2009 at 10:27:16 AM EST

I had a 20,000 gallon/month leak. It was on my side of the water meter. It was within the roots of a tree so we had to run a new line from the meter--fixing the old line was impossible. I had to pay to have the yard dug up and the line replaced. As I recall, it cost about $2500. That was quite a few years ago. I'd hate to think what it would cost at today's price of copper.

Fortunately the water company credited me any usage over my average monthly bill. But since the leak was on my side of the meter, I had to eat the cost of the repairs.

Not to mention that plastic irrigation pipe is no match for a backhoe. I was fixing sprinkler lines for the next three years.