We had a flood in our back yard--in the vegetable garden, no less. When my husband went to turn on the valve for the sprinkler system, which runs on irrigation water every summer, something blew and soon we had a deep pool of water. Of course, the way the system is designed for the subdivision, the main shut-off valve for every four houses is located in the back yard of one of the houses. For ours, it was in our south-side neighbor's yard, and for the first two days we couldn't seem to catch them at home to get permission to go into their yard. Then yesterday evening I hit the jackpot. I caught them at home briefly between errands, and they let me into their yard, where their landscaper had covered over the valve box so it wasn't visible. And the neighbors weren't sure exactly where it was, since their system is self-draining and they never need to mess with it. Argh.
Long story short: we found it, and fortunately it was close to the surface and not buried under one of their landscaping rocks. So we were able to turn off the main valve, pump and bail most of the water out of our hole in the garden, and then replace our defective valve with a new one. American plumbing parts, made in China. At least there's no longer a flood in my garden! I was starting to worry that it would undermine my raised beds. Most of the ground underneath is so full of clay that I could have done some fantastic sculpture with the mud we dug out from around our valve and pipes. Now that the valve is replaced and the leak stopped, there's just a little more hardware to replace and fix after the hole has time to dry out for a couple of days, and then hopefully we can install a new raised valve cover box, button things up and put my garden spot back together again. Just in time to plant the sunflowers along the fence--I hope.
Did I mention that while all this was going on, we had rain?
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