Trench Warfare

Well, this old house was on a well, and the well was on its last legs. The well head is under a concrete slab, and connected to the basement with two 8 foot lengths of galvanized pipe installed in the 1950's. It's only a matter of time until the galvanized gives way and then...no water. Also, every fixture in the house was filled with red sludge from the old well and again, the wonderful galvanized supply main. Since we're in the city limit, we decided to bit the bullet and connect to city water. So, off the Farmer's Rental for a big honkin' trencher. The good guys from the Town of Boone came out and installed my new meter, and augered under the street to connect to the town water line behind the house. My buddy Jeff came out again to help me handle the trencher...for us anyway, it was definitely a two-man job. Those things are heavy! The result was a nice 42 inch deep, 90 ft long trench to hold the new water line (and a spare).




It didn't go perfectly, though. Even though I 'called-before-I-dug,' and asked all the old-timers in the neighborhood if they knew of any other lines in the ground, Jeff and I cut two french drain lines in the process. We were going down over 40 inches, and we knew it wasn't good when the trencher started belching up hunks of PVC. To repair them correctly, I had to dig them out, along with enough room to work. Long story short: I mended the lines, wrapped the repair in landscape cloth, and buried them back with a 1/2 ton of gravel, then soil. Even Jeff said I did the repair 'the cowboy way.' The basement of the house has always been dry, and I didn't want to change that, hence my care in doing the repair. It was a lot of work though...that hole is big enough to bury a Mini Cooper, and I paid for my mistake by digging it by hand. You can see the water line and spare under the drains in the photo below.




Speaking of lines, my wife Nancy hated the power, phone, and cable lines coming in near your head by the back door. We took the opportunity to move all the utilities from the back of the house (north) around to the east side. So, another day with the trencher (though this was actually two months later) to cut a 225 foot long trench for power, cable, and (I thought) phone. The nice guys from New River Light and Power came out and dropped the power line in the trench, along with the coax for the cable. The also put in a nice pedestal by the street.



From the pedestal, the trench takes a left and head to the house. It's a long one. Notice in the pics that the water line trench has already 'healed' by this time...



Note to AT&T/Bellsouth: Get lost. I called about having my phone line put the trench while it was open, and they would have none of it. The word was that they'd come out and dig their own trench when I requested service. I don't think so. I suggested that 1) they were being unnecessarily uncooperative, 2) selling an antiquated service, and 3) charging too much for it. I had hoped to keep the landline in case we wanted to get satellite or something, but they did not play nicely with the other children, so they're out. Looks like cell or cable is it.