After a fairly uneventful weekend (which could have been much better if U of M could have mustered a glorious victory for old Bo), things got a little hairy today. Like usual, I was at work answering phone call after phone call, and around 11:00 a guy name Dale calls and says, "Hey Rick, it looks like your sprinkler line broke near your house. I saw it spewing water like a mother gusher, so I ran up and turned off the valve. Unfortunately, all that water created a hole near your house, and your air conditioner is kind of dangling into the hole."
At the time that Dale told me about this, I figured it would be no big deal. We had the same thing happen in 2004 -- we forgot to have the irrigation company "winterize" our sprinkler system, and the first episode of freezing temperatures spelled doom for our sprinkler line. There was water everywhere, and all the wood chips next to our house washed into our yard, and we spent a couple hours raking them back into their rightful spots. Worst of all, the repairs for the sprinkler line set us back about three hundred bucks.
In 2005, with lesson learned, we hired the sprinkler company to take care of things, and the winter passed without incident. But today was different... way different. Vicki returned home from work before I did, and she gave me a call at work to tell me the situation was very, very bad. Of course, I figured she was exaggerating.
I got home around 7:00 and immediately walked around the yard to check out the situation. Holy friggin' hole! The water had washed out a five foot wide hole about four feet deep! Vicki was not exaggerating. The air conditioner was literally dangling into the hole, supported by only a small piece of electrical conduit that was under great stress and was virtually crying out for mercy. The water had eroded an enormous amount of sand into our yard, depositing a 15' by 20' plume that will be raked up later.
Fortunately for me, Vicki had called her dad about an hour earlier, and he showed up just in time to help me get the situation under control. After a half hour of our back-busting effort, we managed to hoist the air conditioner up out of the hole, and then we cobbled together a makeshift frame to keep it supported.
Tomorrow, I plan to have about four yards of sand delivered. This is one heck of a hole that needs to be filled. I'll also plan on raking a lot of sand out of my lawn.
And, of course, I'm going to call the sprinkler guys and get my sprinkler lines winterized.
-Rick
2 comments:
Rick,
An uninformed bystander may call into question your ability to learn from previous mistakes. If I read correctly, said incident had previously occurred (due to negligence).
I would have enjoyed a photo of the dangling AC unit prior to the temporary support structure construction.
Did that AC unit have a concrete base pad at any point in time?
Hey "bystander" you might want to check out Rick's profile before you go bashing him for making the same mistake twice.
If you do you'll find that he's mentally retarded.
So maybe next time you'll think twice before slamming somebody you don't know!
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