An Unexpected Water Feature

It started on a Thursday evening. I had just gotten home from a long day, about 8:15 pm and saw that the garage door was open - hubby was working outside. After I parked my car, I walked with my stuff to the front of our house to say hi and saw him talking to our neighbor who was in the middle of walking his dog. I greeted Allie and was letting her lick my hand and was in my own little world of relaxation when I heard the words, "You've got a leak." Suddenly, my attention left Allie and immediately focused on the problem at hand. We had a water leak, and water leaks are pretty high up on my list of "worst things that can happen" list.

To make things more complicated, the leak was at our water shutoff valve in front of the house, AND, our meter shutoff by the street was so snug that none of us could turn it off. So, being a Thursday night, and that the leak was still rather small, we let it slowly drip and went on our evening as usual. Our neighbor joked with us, "You've got your very own water feature now in your yard." Yup, I always wanted that landscape fountain...

On Friday morning, I walked outside to check on the leak before heading to work. The water had risen almost to the top of the valve box. Trying to make the most of my situation, I grabbed a cup and scooped out the water, pouring it around the flowerbeds. (If you don't know, we have a broken sprinkler system, so any kind of watering our lawn and flowerbeds can get is a good thing.)

That's a nice little pond there we had.

Once I got to work, I called the city and asked them to come out and turn off our water at the meter. They told me there would be a $20 service fee (as stated on their website), and I tried protesting it. I told the lady, "We are not trying to be lazy. We've tried multiple wrenches and even tried our neighbor's water meter key. It didn't budge." She then told me that if their guys went out there and found it hard to turn, they would waive the fee. Thank goodness.

Friday afternoon, Jonathan got off work early and went home. He and our neighbor tried to find the problem and fix it if it was easy enough. However, we realized yet another problem - there was still water leaking from the valve. And yes, the water was supposedly shut off at the meter. I called the city once again and asked them to come out and shut off the water a second time, because clearly it wasn't shut off. About two hours later, he came out, unhooked the entire meter because he said the angle stop was bad, and then told us to fix our leak first and then he would come back and fix the meter.

By then it was almost 7 o'clock, dinner was half cooked, and we had no water in the house. We made the call to pack up dinner, wash whatever dishes we could with reservoir gallon water (which is saved from our shower every evening while waiting for the water to heat up), and spend the night at my dad's house. After arriving at my dad's, we finished cooking dinner and ended the night with a movie.

Despite the chaos, we had stuffed bell peppers for dinner. It was pretty tasty!

The next morning, we called some plumbers to see if anyone could come out that afternoon. We had a plumber who said he could come out early afternoon, which worked out great because I was supposed to cook lunch for my dad as a late Father's Day lunch. After we ate and cleaned up, Jonathan and I packed up our stuff again and headed home, not sure if we could stay at our own house again, but hopeful.

Once we got back to our house, the plumber arrived shortly after and came out to look at the leak. He was very puzzled why the city had disconnected our meter and was rather annoyed. He said he had to have the water on to see where the leak was coming from in order to fix it. So he reconnected the meter, looked at the leak, tightened one nut, put the valve back together, and called it good. I was almost in disbelief as to how easily it was that he had fixed the problem. And on top of that, he didn't charge us anything. But it wasn't all fixed yet.

Our water was back on at this point, but there was still water leaking....now at the meter by the street. On the one hand, it was leaking water that shouldn't have been leaking. On the other hand, it was leaking before the meter so we weren't actually being charged for it. Once again, I called the city and told them about our situation and asked them to send someone out to fix our meter. In the mean time, rather than sit back and relax, Jonathan and I took advantage of the water that was overflowing at a rather fast rate out of our water meter box. It very easily could have just overflowed into the street and drained into the sewer, but he and I worked outside for an hour before the city guy came to fix it. One of us sat on the curb and scooped water out with an empty salsa jar into two 5-gallon buckets as well as our watering pail while the other carried the water and watered the flowerbeds, lawn, and wherever else needed it (which was pretty much every square inch of our property that wasn't our physical house.) Every so often we'd switch roles and do the other task. Yes, we did this for an hour.

Once the city guys came, we finally took our break and let them do their thing outside while we lay in our hammock inside and perused Facebook on our phones.

So there you have it. The most unexpected water leak that was resolved in possibly the best way ever...with a complimentary 20-30 gallons (at least) of water from the city that we conserved and reused.