The wrong kind of excitement

That's what you get for complaining about being bored. There's a construction company working across street this week doing something with the underground gas lines. We're don't know exactly what but it's a big project. Lots of heavy equipment, dump trucks, backhoes and jackhammers roaring around and banging.  

Sez me to John, I should go out and tell them "be careful you don't break something at our house." He gave me that look, but these were prophetic words. About 11, a man knocked on the front door and said they accidentally "hooked" (his word) our gas line. It wasn't ruptured, but had to be replaced.  OK, sez us. Not that we had a choice in the matter.

This set into motion an avalanche of construction on the street and in our yard. Many highly paid people standing around looking at their phones! Unlike the sewer line, the gas company owns the line and is responsible for maintenance. Nothing is free of course, we pay through our taxes and bills.

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Anyway, bursts of activity interspersed with even more nerve-wracking periods of silence. Where they on break?  Was there some problem? Meanwhile in the yard, they dug under the meter about 4 feet deep.

 

 

Surprise. Inside the messy hole, the gas line running right over the top of an old sewer line to nowhere. Apparently, when they built these houses over a 100 years ago, gutters fed directly into the sewers, which went directly into Puget Sound. Honestly, the layers of archeology in these old houses.

 

They dug the hole near the side of the house by hand, thank you. They used a backhoe to dig an even bigger hole in the cement-hard dirt on parking strip.

 

They finished about 5 pm, filled the holes, finally turned off gas to the house. That was a bonus- we thought it would be off all day. I started to get nervous as they packed up to leave. The gas company still had to come out and activate the meter. No cooking, hot water or heat in the meantime.

 

We ordered take out from the Thai place up the street (what a good idea) and sat down in the chilly living room to wait. About 7, I got impatient and called the gas company emergency line, which incidentally has the best customer service in the world. Of course they don’t want houses blowing up. She checked with the technician while I was on the line, and said he was delayed but on his way.  By 8, everything was back to normal.

 

On a positive note, you could hardly tell they were here.  He even replanted the mondo grass and replaced the bricks.

And out on the parking strip, threw some grass seed over the sandy dirt. No idea what the green graffiti means.

If you find these things interesting, that faint yellow line on the grass shows the path where the new gas line shot through underground. The old defunct line still comes in from the street to the right. More archaeology for future generations to ponder.

What a day.