A Come-along and my 60 ton Bliss

I spent yesterday digging up my front yard . Got about 14 feet of old terra cotta drain pipe exposed for replacement later today . It's about 3 feet down , and the ground is hard . My back hurts . Diggin' wasn't anywhere near this hard when I was young ... I haven't bought the new pipe yet , but I'm ready for the sticker shock .

You just think you are ... B-)

tschus pyotr

Actually I was surprised at how inexpensive it turned out to be . Total for materials was under a hundred bucks , the guy that helped me [works for my BIL the plumber] is gonna be another c-note . Had I contracted with a plumber to do this it would have ran at least 2500 bucks ... and that's for the cheap plumber !

$2,500 would have been about right with them supplying all the labor to dig the hole and expose the line, fix the pipe, and then fill the hole back in when they were done.

You supplied the grunt labor and shagged down the repair parts for them, so that makes their job quick and easy, and then you fill the hole back in. That makes the bill a lot nicer, because they only have to come do the actual skilled labor part.

We offer that all the time to our customers, especially ones that already have a full-time grounds crew on regular payroll that is used to fixing the sprinklers and planting trees - and one Summer Camp where the older campers volunteer to make the place better for the next generation, rather than just make macrame keychains...

We'll mark the path, let them dig the trench, then we'll come drop in the electrical conduits and run the wire, they back-fill.

All of a sudden the bill drops like a rock, because they aren't paying me (or my Assistant who isn't a Spring Chicken anymore either) to dig a trench. And frankly, that's not on the top of either of our Fun Things To Do lists - we like finding and fixing.

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I stand amazed. Wow. "Such a deal." (Frozen pipe last winter cost me ~900 bucks, between the repair bill, and the water bill.

"Bruce L. Bergman (munged human readable)" on Sun, 13 Nov 2011 07:57:29 -0800 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

And it does seem to be one of those things that you can brag about later. As in "Oh yeah, we dug trenches when I was at summer camp ..."

I was doing that one summer (the digging) when my friend the Doctor told of digging a ditch at home in Virginia, when he was 17. His pappy rode up on a horse and stopped, said"Charles, there is two sorts of work in this world. What you are doing, and what I am doing. And believe you me, this pays a whole lot better,too." and rode off.

tschus pyotr

I have always been a do it yourself kinda guy . The big plus is that my father was that way too , and probably one of the smartest people I ever met . I learned a lot from him , the most important thing being that I can learn anything I want to know if I'm willing to put forth the effort . That has turned into a large quantity of tooling for several trades and a better standard of living because I don't pay other people to fix my stuff (except automagic transmissions !) as a rule . BTW , the guy that helped me is a 2nd year apprentice , and his contribution was the same as mine - man a shovel , swing a pick , cut & glue pipe , etc . He was in the trench right with me for the whole thing , and asked for a lot less than I'm paying him .