Update on the Basement/Pipes

Over the weekend we hired a plumber to install a new water supply pipe to our house.  The idea is that a special computer-guided drill is inserted into a hole in the ground near the water meter (out by the street) and it bores a tunnel through the ground and under the foundation of the house.  It should come out near the hot water heater in our basement, where they will attach it to our house pipes.  The plumbers arrived this morning and spent some time trying to find where the existing water supply pipe enters the house.  (The plumbing in our house very much resembles that screensaver that draws pipes randomly until it fills up the screen, except that most of our pipes appear and disappear behind obstacles, making you truly wish you had some kind of pipe X-ray.)  In the course of finding it they believe they figured out where the underground break is - very near where the old water line comes under the foundation; they also think they partially unscrewed the supply pipe from a connection buried up in the wall, which means that even though they capped off the bottom of the old supply pipe they may find that it leaks when they turn the water on.  They will fix it, of course, but they may have to cut through a cabinet, a wall, or both.

The guy who operates the tunneling drill won't get here for a couple more hours, so the plumbers left for the day and will come back tomorrow, at which point they should only have to hook up both ends of the newly buried hose and turn on the water.  Let's hope that is the case.

Saturday night N and I went downstairs to try to shovel some of the muck out of the way for when the plumbers come.  The subsoil here is an extremely fine clay powder, which when wet apparently very much resembles wet cement.  It is extremely heavy, and sticky, and was difficult to move at all.  We're hoping that when it dries a little it will be easier to move so we can clear the mud off the back of the boiler and hot water heater and maybe build some sort of retaining wall to stabilize the crawlspace against future floods.

More later....