A Study of Idiots and Ditch Digging
OK, what idiot decided dumping left-over concrete and burying it in the yard of the house you’re building was a bright idea?!
(Any use of the word “idiot” reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. From the movie I.Q.: )
“He’s not an idiot savant at all. He’s the real thing; he’s an idiot idiot!”
We’ve recently had our neighborhood fitted (for lack of a better term) with secondary water for watering the yard. Utah, being the desert state that it is, has to be somewhat frugal with water. Watering your lawn using the standard city-provided (culinary) water supply gets really expensive during the summer—somewhere in the neighborhood of two to three times a winter-month bill. We do, however, have a surplus of irrigation water available in the area, so the city has been stubbing out secondary water lines to the residential areas.
Anyway, it’s up to the residents to sign-up for—and hook-up—this supply to their sprinkler systems. Some hire it out; others figure “Why pay someone else for a quick bit of sprinkler pipe work? How hard could it be?” I figured I only had about fifteen feet or so to dig, have ditch-digging tools and set about bright and early Saturday morning, having found myself in the (delusional) second group.
First I had to find the sprinkler hook-up from the stop-and-waste line. The one thing done well by the contractor I hired to do the sprinklers was that he put the pipes in good and deep, to void any possibility of frozen pipes in the winter. Unfortunately for me, that meant an extra cubic yard’s worth of digging. I’m not the spring chick I usually feel like, apparently. By the time that bit was excavated I was rather more weary than I would have liked to admit.
Digging the ditch for the line from the supply stub over to the stop-and-waste was now the big problem. I got the sod up, no problem, but after getting down about nine or so inches, I found… concrete. Blankin’, blinkin’ concrete!
This discovery after nearly six hours of digging. Completely demoralized me. Didn’t want to continue. “Just bury me right here in this ditch!” (OK, it was mostly the muscles in my back voicing that option, but it was generally hailed by the rest of my being as an unpleasant discovery.)
What kind of…
“Hey Jeb, what we gunna do with this left over see-ment?”
“I don’ know. Hay, what say we just dump it in this here hole and cover it with durt?”
“That there’s a great idea; it will be like that see-ment never wuz! You’re a gen-u-ine genious!”
“That’s why thay made me the Foreman fer this here job.”
(As a service to the community, I omitted the “colorful metaphors” from this imagined conversation; I don’t think they’re appropriate, and don’t appreciate hearing them used, and assume you are of like mind. If you feel I’ve taken too much literary license, just insert “<beeep>” or “<beep>ing <beep>” after about every third word.)
I found a friend who had some sledge hammers, and an old rail-road pick he wouldn’t mind letting me use; I found a brother-in-law who, bless his soul, was willing to come bust some ‘crete with me. Fortunately these slabs were thinner than some of the other pours I’ve found in the yard, and he was able to make quick work of the two I hit while ditching.
Right about the time “we” finished with the left-over concrete, we both needed hurry off to previous engagements. He promised to come back and help me do the PVC runs, even if it was dark. He’s just that kind of guy.
By the time we got back, it was indeed pushing twilight. He collected all the tools and PVC bits we would need, and I grabbed the halogen floods to illuminate the project and bug repellent to keep the micro-mosquitoes off.
Neither of us had ever done any PVC work (well, other than the occasional foray into PVC antenna supports), so this would be entertaining. We dutifully read the instructions on both the primer and the cement, and went too it. We did learn what “push-back” means, and did have one joint that seized up right before it bottomed out (hopefully it will be OK), but other than that it went quite well.
And it only cost me twelve hours, and a few unkind words directed at the induhviduals responsible for the concrete. On the flip side of the coin, I learned to work PVC pipe, and gained opportunity to learn further appreciation for the generosity of others.
So a huge “Thank you!” to my partner-in-crime, KE7MOS, my brother-in-law without whom the project would not have gotten finished!
Tags: brother-in-law, contractors, frustration, idiots, left-overs, mosquitos, sprinklers