Water Feature

When we sell our house next year (hopefully) there will be mention in the blurb about the water features in the back yard: attractive gurgling ponds. We will spiff them up so people can imagine enjoying the yard, watching the water.

But right now we have a not so attractive water feature in the front yard. It isn't the one pictured above. No. That water main leak was 'fixed' in 2005. Fixed in such a way that it would "never happen again." (City worker's words, not mine.) Some of the details of that fun time are here.

Yesterday FFP noticed that the depressions in the yard containing the water meter and the main sprinkler system valve were full of water. I went out and cut off the water to our house. I tried to bail out the box for the sprinkler valve but it filled almost as fast as I could bail. Hmmm. A little exploration showed a river snaking around the driveway and under the Ecocrete. And the place just above the seam from the last repair was a sinkhole of mud. Now when you have a leak like the one above that is six feet underground it takes a while to fill the ground down to bedrock and start bubbling around at the surface. So this baby has already been leaking for a while. The city has had a look. They admit they have a leak. They gave it a priority three. (No threat to life or property.) They might fix it in two to three weeks. When they do the destruction to the yard will be considerable since it will be a swamp. They will eventually sort of fix their destruction. Maybe by Christmas. We will have to spend money to make the yard look decent again for buyers. Ain't it fun? Our city, by the way, chides us on water waste. Um, yeah. Can you imagine how much is being wasted every day from this leak? Maybe a gallon or two a minute. Every minute. Twenty-four hours a day. Fifteen hundred gallons a day. That's a bunch o' flushes! And I know from driving around that there are others like this, leaking away treated water for days on end.