I was house-sitting for a friend who was on a 10-day vacation to the Outer Reaches of Civilization. On the fifth day, there was a lot of standing water on the cover of her water meter in the yard. The whole meter box was full of water. Called SAWS, who sent a guy out to confirm a leak “3 inches on the owner’s side of the meter box. Owner’s responsibility.” I didn’t know who her plumber is, couldn’t call to ask, and I knew it would cost a bundle, so I shut off the water and tried to fix it myself. Three inches in? No problem.\r
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Ha! Even with the water turned off, I couldn’t keep the water out of the hole I tried to dig. Could see the leak, but couldn’t stop it. A few hours in, I had to give up. My friend has a roommate, so just turning off the water until she got back wasn’t an option.\r
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I called Roto-Rooter, because that’s who I use at my house, and found that my friend was already in their system. Within the hour, Johnny and Joseph were on the front porch, and 135 minutes later—problem solved. There were actually two leaks, the second one three feet deeper. If they had just fixed the problem I pointed out, instead of looking further up the system, the problem would still exist.\r
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When Johnny and Joseph left, you could hardly tell there had been a hole. They had cut and lifted the sod before digging out the clay soil around the pipes. They did the job, filled the hole, tamped it down and replaced the sod almost exactly as it had been when they arrived.\r
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Who ya gonna call? Roto-Rooter!
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