Amuzing story

[Jennifer]

My husband and I bought our house a year ago. We have been slowly fixing the house up over the year. This past weekend we started to tear out the old landscaping in the front yard. We want something more tropical (we live in Flordia), and there were large overgrown bushes in the front yard. We started pulling up the bushes, and were on a roll. There were two large bushes that flanked the sides of the driveway. The first one was tough. We ended up having to hook a tow rope up to the SUV and pull it out. We did the same thing for the second bush, and it came up with ease. Then I noticed a gusher. When we pulled up the bush, we broke the main water pipe. We could never find the main shut off value to the house. Well now we know why. Some numb nut planted a bush over it some 15 years ago. Do people not think before they do things like this? Just another joy of home ownership :)

[Suzie-Q]

I think you answered your own question.

;^)~~~ Sue (remove the x to e-mail) ~~~~~~

"I reserve the absolute right to be smarter today than I was yesterday." -Adlai Stevenson

*************************************************

[Judy and Dave G]

Um, Jennifer,

are you talking about the planting of the bush or the ripping it out with an SUV?

Judy

Just another joy of home

[Carney]

Think b/4 doing what? Pulling shrubs out with a SUV? Stupid indeed, most people realize there is water lines that enter a home and think b/4 going crazy.

[CBhvac]

You DO mean hooking a chain to a truck and ripping trees out from around their home? Yea..most people do.

[Jennifer]

The whole point was we could never find the water line to begin with. The main shut off value was buried two feet beneath a shrub. Yes we used an SUV to pull up the shrub. I have seen this done many times on home improvement shows. Takes all the work out of it. Roots come up and all. Where as it would have taken us an 20 minutes for each shrub, it took 2 minutes.

[m Ransley]

The only show I ever saw of an suv pulling out something was the suvs bumper comming off.

[Brigitte J.]

Yeah, but I'll bet they knew where the water main was before they tried this.

Really?...not the impression I got from your post. Seems it created big problems.

Brigitte

[CBhvac]

Your local utilities would have come out, for free, located it, and let you know it was there.

Still laughing over that one...

I have seen heart transplants many times on cable TV, but I am not about to go try it.

Water lines too...

Nah..its gonna take much longer than that...got water back yet?

[Carney]

Jennifer,

There is a # you call b/4 you dig (1-800 #), it's in your phone book. All the utilities companies including phone/gas/electric/cable/water will come out and mark where such lines run at no cost to you.

If they mismark and you hit something, it's their fault and the cost is on them. If you proceed without calling and hit a utility it's on you. Might want to keep this in the memory banks for the future.

[rb608]

Sounds as though the OP's valve was on her property, not in the utility company ROW. Does "Miss Utility" perform the location service on private property?

Joe F.

p.s. I know where my well & lines are; but I'll add an amusing story of my own.

I'd recently bought my old farm house, complete w/ tractor (Ford 9-N). I wanted to put up split rail fencing around the perimeter of the lawn area, so I bought the posts & rented an auger for the 3-pt hitch. I took advantage of the three day Easter weekend, laid out the post locations & went at it. All went well. Seemed like there was a rock or two in every hole; but I got adept at backing off the auger & dropping it down again to break through. After about 80 holes, I was coming down the home stretch, along the driveway by the house. Another rock, some deft manipulation of the PTO, and I banged my way through another tough one. Except I'd drilled a hole through the top of my septic tank. :-)

[Doug Miller]

And I'll bet you said "Oh, s--t", right?

-- Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?

[Stormin Mormon]

And five hundred dollar plumber bill?

[CBhvac]

Ours does. Matter of fact, on about everyother page in the yellow pages, there is a reminder to call before you dig, etc, and the number to call, and yes, its free. If we are going to be digging for say...a Geothermal system, we HAVE to call, and do. Its saved our butts more than one time.

And no..its never cost a dime.

Too funny...and yes..I thought th esame thing the other poster did..your first words were....Oh shit..right?

[DaveG]

Same here. We call Gopher One (Minnesota) and one phone call gets all of your buried utility lines marked with different colored paint, as well as different colored flags. They mark ng, phone, electric, water, cable tv, whatever. And they have a 48 hour lead time, and do not charge for the service. Competent trades people will not even put a pick or shovel in your yard unless you or they have this done. We had to do if for our irrigation system install, and when we built our deck, and when we had a nursery come out and plant trees for us. Good thing, too, since I wanted a 10' maple tree right above our ng line. Most pro installers call themselves, and schedule their work around the line marking. Dave

[rb608]

Well, first there was puzzlement at the black ooze filling the bottom of the hole (I'd never owned a septic tank before). Visions of the Beverly Hilbillies flashed through my mind before the smell hit. *Then* it was "Oh sh*t". :-)

Joe F.

[Steve B.]

So you pulled the shrub out with the SUV and it's the other people that are stupid? You saved 18 minutes and cost yourself a couple hundred for a plumber and God only knows how much time. Its a very funny story and I think most of us here have done something equally silly or worse... Lord knows I have.. Lets not blame the other people though. After all that was probably a one gallon potted shrub when it was first planted.

Steve B.

[Jennifer]

Actually, it only set us back about 30 minutes. We had the water company come up and shot off the water, and my husband fixed the problem after the water was off. My point was why would someone put a shrub on top of the water shot off value in the first place. It is not suppossed to be covered up so if you need to shut the water off, you have easy access. There was no way around it, even if we called the water company. The shrub's roots had wrapped themselves around the pipe. Even if we were gentle, the pipe was going to break.

[Chris]

I'm with you on this one. I did the same thing with my truck, pulling 3 shrubs out in a very short amount of time, with very little effort. That was after I had a hell of a time trying to dig the first one out by hand.