OT Steel post and water pipe

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

1. He wasn't very happy with the 0+ 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.

You gotta love cement deer.

Maybe I should have changed the subject to "Arson by remote control".

A plumber told one of those "I didn't do it but I know the guy that did" stories.

Old farm house has been torn down to make way for new. A trencher is digging a ditch for a new water pipe to the well. Along the drive he hits a 4" steel pipe and chews it up some but not enough cut through. Whoever installed the septic tank had run metal under the drive to the leach field on the other side.

As a cutting torch is applied to the pipe, sewer gas ignites, blowing the lid off the septic tank 50' away. The lid goes up between two trees, flipping like a coin. It knocks the transformer off the power pole, drops the primaries across the tin roof of the hay barn. The sparks and heat ignite the hay and the barn burns.

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 19:35:02 -0500, Eide put forth the notion that...

Just don't let the neighbors see you doing it.

Been there, done that. I didn't realize that some of the decomposed granite that makes up our subsoil here (think coarse sand or fine gravel) had made it into the incoming line, or I would have cleared the line. By the time I knew we had rocks all through the house, in almost every valve.

To clear it I had to go to every cold water valve and on each shut off the main valve, pull the valve packing, hang a hose over the open valve and have the main turned on briefly. Most of the time the rocks would come clear, a few times I would have to work a jam out with a screwdriver. After reassembly and turning the main back on I'd check the valve and what it controlled, about half of the time more rocks would come through and I'd have to repeat the process. It took a couple of days with 4 bathrooms, 8 sinks and 5 faucets to get things cleaned up.

I still find rocks in toilet tanks, and the water heater sounds funny at times...

sounds like what happened to my brother in law.. in california, big redwood house.. just sold it via his company as they were transferring him.. he finds one of the boards on the back of the house was loose so he nails it in place... the nail goes though a copper pipe that was behind the board.... then the plumber has to come out to fix the pipe.. why not just let it be... the new owner could have put that nail in place... some people have all the luck....