When It Rains...it Leaks!

Since it's getting ready for our regular grass to begin coming back, I thought it was time to add that sprinkler that was missing in our backyard system. I had a landscaping company come and give me a free estimate which sounded totally reasonable to me, so I told them to do it. Since they were here, I asked how much more it would be to trim our hybiscus bushes--the price was right, so I added that on too.

As the guy was getting ready to leave, I asked him if he would look at our drip system since I didn't think that it worked and we hadn't been able to figure it out. He was happy to give it a look and went over to our sprinkler box. When he turned on the system, the box made a rather loud humming noise which it has always done since we've lived here. He told me that it shouldn't be making any noise and that the wires were probably in need of replacement. We went through the programming of each day and noticed that the box displayed--Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Now, doesn't that sound about like the perfect week? Two Saturdays in there? Ahhh yeah. Great for a lifestyle, not great for a sprinkling system.

The cost of replacing the box is not something that I wanted to add to the list and it isn't urgent at the moment, so it didn't get done. However, right after he turned off the sprinkler system, which had been running for maybe two minutes, he noticed that there was a leak right next to our house. We decided to check it out further, so I walked closer and he turned the water on again and the water bubbled to the surface about like the oil gurgles through the ground in the Beverly Hillbillies show. Oh no! What am I supposed to do about this? My man, the landscape guy, does these repairs too! Happy day--add it to the bill.

That's when we turn around and notice there's another leak at the end of the driveway--even worse than the leak by the house. Ahhh, all those mornings last summer when Derek would leave for work, he'd comment on how we must be watering our lawn too heavily because there was always a ton of water in the street. Question answered. Oh yeah, that water bill I got for $150 dollars last November, after I had stopped watering the lawn--that explains that too.

Did I mention he found another leak in the backyard by our shed? My, oh my. What the heck, just go pluck some of the cash off the money tree we planted in the backyard and come back tomorrow and fix the leaks, add the sprinkler, fix the broken sprinkler and trim the hybiscus.


Saturday morning, we all, Derek me and the kids, got up and ate a delicious waffle breakfast prepared with love by yours truly and then we went outside to pull weeds in our front lawn. Derek also edged the lawn. I realize most of you can't even see your lawns through the snow and we're pulling weeds! Our HOA is very picky on two points--weeds and parking in the street. Don't do either or they're likely to come by and post some sign in your yard decrying your terrible negligence. We'd been warned so we had a mission to get weeds pulled and since the landscaping guys were coming, we anticipated a beautiful new yard by the end of the day.

Well, after the first three leaks were repaired, a funny thing happened. Let me explain it this way. When you have a leak, water is not being distributed like it should to all the other places where your underground pipes connect. Once you fix a leak in one spot, you may discover that you have leaks elsewhere that you didn't realize were there because water was never reaching those other leaks. That's right--two more leaks for a grand total of FIVE leaks that had to be fixed.

You know what, the leaks didn't cost that much to be fixed considering how much money I paid in water bills last summer. The two neighbors came out and sympathized and said that a sprinkler system here only lasts about ten years--this house is on its twelfth year, so I guess we were lucky.

I just have to say that there must be some incredible prayers that were answered and blessings that were provided to us while we were in school because since we've moved we've had our TV break, our phone break, one of our cars need major repairs, the other car had to get new brakes, Ryanna had six cavities and some other items I'm blocking right now. Please, let's not have anything else break in the next six months...our money tree is out of season.