On 10 Dec 2003 09:05:00 -0800, (Bob) wrote:

My brother in Fortuna, CA, sent me this message last night, I thought
others might enjoy it.
Bob Meade


It is windy and raining...........the cement deer blow over last
night...this morning I drove a steel fence post down
to act as a support so it would never blow over again...........I
noticed water coming up,,,,,,,,,yes
I hit the main water line to the house............now try and remove
that steel post ..it does not want to come up............finally I get
it removed...............than dig a great hole to get to the
pipe...........which
I had cut in half, shattering the ends............go to Wyckoff"s
plumbing store.........get a repair kit..........lay on my belly
and install the repair...........of course it leaks.........reinstall
and it holds.........turn on the water
so Alma can shower as she has a dentist appointment...........the
water system plugs up
from dirt and the volcanic rock from the ground cover that had made
its way into the one and one fourth inch
plastic pipe..........all this and it is still blowing and
raining...........I am cold and wet and ****ed off, but at least it
is not snowing........but feels cold enough too...........and it is
now four o'clock.........I give up call
the plumber from Denny Wendt's and he
will be here in the morning..........as you might know**, all pipes
under the house are copper and each joint is soldered.............What
a day..........and it started out with a simple job of putting in a
steel support post ..........to hold up the deer statue.........I
know the plumbing bill will be rough...........but I will pay
it............gladly
JMM

I had a swimming pool service call like that once. The water was
about 4" deep for half of the backyard. The customer comes out saying
that he was driving rebar through the railroad ties he was putting
around for a garden the day before. I asked if they had any pictures
during the construction of the pool and his wife comes back with a
thick photo album with nothing but pictures of the pool. The guy
drove the rebar through 4 - 2" new PVC pipes in a tight group of about
16. He wasn't very happy with the $800+ bill. I had to get balloons ,
surgical tubing , and a blood pressure ball pump to insert into each
pipe to stop the water from flowing and glue each one back together
with 4- 90's each. Getting the pipes away from each other was also a
bitch.

Another common call was from the plumbers putting the pool together
with rocks in the lines. They must push them down the trench and load
them with rocks and just glue them up. I would run a fish tape each
way to calculate where the probelm was and then wait a day for someone
to jack hammer up the deck to find two 90's glued to each other packed
full of rocks.

I always thought it a shame cause they were new pools. Getting rocks
out of spa jets is the worst ! I've seen many new $30,000 pools with
spas that the jets are lame and probably cause they have rock jams.