Not So Handy Man

I have lived in my current home for ten years. It is the first place I have ever lived that did not have a backyard the size of a postage stamp. Suddenly owning five acres of land to care for, you can imagine that the learning curve is pretty steep. I have destroyed a lot of stuff while learning how to fix that very same stuff.

Over the years, I think I have gotten better at taking care of problems on my own, but every now and then something stupid comes along that reminds me that I still have a lot to learn.

Last week was an example of that something stupid.

I planted a few new fruit trees on the property over the last few weeks and added some drip lines to make sure everything was getting enough water to survive the hot Sacramento summer.  As the weather has recently warmed up and the rains have stopped, I turned on the watering timers, activating the drip lines.

Things began dying. I wasn’t sure exactly why at first, but a quick exploration of the yard showed me that most of my driplines were dry. The timers were turning on, but no water was reaching the plants, including my new fruit trees.

I started hand watering the trees with a bucket and a hose while I tried to figure out what the problem was.

Timers were working. Check.

Valves seemed to be opening. Check.

Water flowing? Nope.

I’d done everything I knew how to do, which admittedly was not much. It was time to hire a professional. I was hesitant to call another plumber after the debacle I had gone through in January of this year. A pipe broke under my driveway and it took several weeks, three plumbers, and $2000 dollars to repair. If you don’t recall that particular episode in my life, you can catch up on it HERE.

I still have a small case of PTSD over the incident. I occasionally wake up my wife in the middle of the night yelling, “It’s still leaking! It won’t stop! Why won’t it stop?”

I briefly wondered if, after fixing the broken pipe under my driveway, had they rebroken it? Or perhaps put something together wrong so the water was flowing somewhere else? Was my neighbor getting free water to fill his pool at my expense?

Regardless of the reason, it was beyond my ability to correct. I finally broke down and called a landscaper that specialized in sprinkler repair. I figured, it he can’t fix the problem, maybe he can tap into my existing pipes and set up a new sprinkler valve and timer. It would probably be expensive, but it was better than losing $300 worth of new fruit trees. Or at least better than an entire summer of lugging buckets of water around the property watering those same damn trees.

The repair guy turned up the next morning. He started with the usual:

“Hi. What seems to be the problem?”

I told him the drip lines don’t work and I think there might be something wrong with the valve. I was pretty sure the valve was fine, but I guess I was still hoping I didn’t need an entirely new drip system.

He checked the valve, looked at me, and said, “Nope. Valve is fine.”

With a sigh, I pointed toward a row of trees beside our driveway and told him, “My trees are dying. There’s no water going over there.” I felt like a child admitting I didn’t know how to tie my own shoes.

“You might have a broken pipe,” he said.

I told him about the broken pipe in January, and that the plumber had promised that everything was now fixed.

The sprinkler guy asked, “When they finished and blew out the pipes, everything was working then?”

When they finished and did the who and the what now?

“They didn’t check,” I admitted.

Sprinkler guy gave me a look that suggested he might now also be thinking I didn’t know how to tie my own shoes.

“So, they didn’t blow out the pipes when they were done?”

“I could answer that question,” I said carefully, “If I knew what you meant by ‘blow out the pipes.’”

Rather than explain what he meant, Sprinkler guy simply unhooked the drip line connector from the main hose bib. If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry. Neither do I. I’m just repeating the words he used because it sounds better than saying he unscrewed the blue twisty thing from the pipe with the handle on it.

He next turned on the water from the main valve.

Chunks of mud and a torrent of brown water came pouring out of the hose bib. When the water finally cleared up, he turned it off and reattached the drip line.

“They didn’t blow out the lines,” he said.

“Yes. Yes, I see,” I told him. Then I held out my left foot and said, “Can you tie this one, too?”

He didn’t understand the joke, but that was okay. He seemed very happy when I handed him a check for $100 for the 30 seconds of actual work he had done.

The good news is my trees are getting watered again and they will (probably) survive the summer. I even learned something new from Sprinkler guy. I now know that “blow out the lines” means run water through the pipes to flush out the dirt.

The bad news is I clearly still have a lot to learn about taking care of a large piece of property.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go buy some new shoes that use Velcro straps instead of laces.

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