2007-01-11 - 7:39 p.m.
A week and a coupla few days or so ago, in the late morning, a sink hole opened up in front of my house caused by a water main break. There were crews of people that stood around all day staring at the sink hole, probably waiting for overtime to kick in before they embarked on fixing the problem. It was necessary to dig up both sides of the street in a couple of places, plus the hole, and it was also necessary to shut off the water to my house. My house was the only one affected.
When the water was turned on, we were advised to flush out the system, mainly through the tub, because there would be a lot of sediment. So we did, and all was well.
The next day, Sparky and I embarked on a day trip to Bear Mountain, and lo and behold, when we approached the front of the house, the water shut off valve at the curb was leaking, all the dirt around it had eroded, even the curb was missing, and there was a trail of dirty water that we followed to the center of town. We turned around and came home and I checked in with the water company to alert them, and they said they would send an emergency team. It wasn’t necessary for me to be home.
I got a call from Jude who told me I better get a hotel, because my street was once again shut down with lots of digging. *sigh* I hoped for the best.
When we did get home, everything seemed to be somewhat repaired, though there was a big gap between the curb and the street near my water shutoff and a hazard blockade thingy. I had to pee like nobody’s business (tmi?), and when I washed my hands, the water shut off after a second. I went downstairs and told Sparky: “Guess what we don’t have? “ What? “Water.” Uh, no. Just sediment in the system that blocked the faucet filter so water couldn’t come out. My concern was that the water company had encountered a problem and our water was off. Call me a moron.
Anyway, I’d been on vacation for an extended period and had neglected boiler duties. While it’s been warm in the northeast, when you are sitting on your fat ass doing nothing you tend to run the boiler. Mostly I try to drain, fill, and replace water in the boiler when I’ve shut it down or lower when I’m not home, so as not to crack the boiler. It’s kind of tricky to trickle water and flush it out and not very effective, but that’s what I decided to do on New Year’s Eve Day, since like I said, I’d been running it, and the water seem low. Since it was running hot, I trickled in water, and exchanged a couple of buckets – just enough to bring the water level up. I thought the valve felt funny, and the gauge was filling faster than usual, but, oh well.
Anyway, thank dog Sparky is always late. I showered, he puttered, showered, we got ready to leave, and he alerts me to the fact that the living room radiator is leaking water and the kitchen is flooded. I immediately run down to the basement without looking, and start emptying pail after pail of water from the boiler. Can you guess what happened? Some sediment lodged itself so the shut off valve allowed a trickle of water to flow into the system. I’m figuring it was trickling for 1.5 hours, and just enough to alert us to a problem. If we had left on time for our New Year’s celebration and returned hours later, the downstairs and basement surely would have been flooded, never mind the upstairs. The water from the living room radiator just missed the circuit box in the basement by inches when we caught it.
Thanks for being late, Sparky.
