Monday 26 July 2010

Water issue number 2

Since we moved in, there has been a wet patch down the front by the garage...


It is worse when it's raining, but it's there all the time, even back in summer when there had been no rain for days.


I had a plumber here the other week who needed to turn off the mains water (which, by the way, had taken Matt and I about an hour to find as it was buried deep beneath the flax bush by the garage)....anyway, he saw all this water and declared that we had a leak in our mains. Bummer. He also pointed out a stretch of plastic piping that was sitting above ground that he reckoned was our mains water - apparently if they are above ground these pipes become brittle and will easily break. He told me that we had a HUGE problem on our hands.

So this weekend we had Alistair over (the only person we know with some DIY knowledge) and investigated.

First, they dug away around the start of the water pipe..


Then they tried to access the side of the garage where the "above ground" pipe was running (ah, not a very easy job as you can see)...


Then they realised that this pipe was no water pipe...it carried the phone cable...!? So, basically this plumber was wrong - there was no above ground water pipes showing...

The question remains though about whether we have a leak, or if the run-off is simply stormwater drainage from further up the hill?

For now, we're taking the stance we have had up until this point - ignore, ignore, ignore.

When Dad gets back from his overseas junket we will maybe get him in there with the chainsaw (oh, I forgot to say - it took something like 14 weeks for his knee to heal after the last incident and he hasn't picked up a chainsaw since), so that we can really see what's going on.

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