Todays Lesson…

Well, we got our early start today, like 7am early.  One of our goals today was to get all the grass gone, and to cap off a couple of sprinklers that were in the corners.  We called the number to find all the underground utilities and they marked it all off, and we had a idea of where things were.  But as I said, today’s lesson is to never assume things are as you think they are, LOL.

Superviser Checking Things Out

OOOPSS!

And The Fix

Sprinkler Lines

Mom Digging Around The Lines

See, I Work Too

As I was digging up the grass around the gate, I took a swing with the mattocks and all of a sudden, I had a water geyser going.  I had hit the main line for the sprinkler system heading to the back yard.  So in a rush, I ran around trying to find the handle to turn off the main for the sprinklers, cursing my bad luck, and trying to explain to mom at the same time (not easy let me tell you).  I got the water turned off, and went to examine the damage.  It was worse than I thought.  I had actually hit the line twice, once on each side of a elbow (see pics).  Mom and I had planed to go to Home Depot for caps for the sprinklers, but now we needed to go to fix my foul up.  Good thing I had seen the sprinkler guys fix our mainline near the tree in the backyard (yes, we nicked the line then too, LOL).  Short story long, we got things fixed, and got back to digging, CAREFULLY.  Because, as we learned, the sprinkler lines are not buried as deep as I thought they would be, LOL.  The one I cut may not be but 1″ under ground.

The good news is that we got all the grass up, fixed the mistakes, and dug up more of the other sprinkler lines to know where they are.  But there are more lines to watch for, plus the phone line and the cable TV line.  So we will be digging carefully for the next faze of this project.