In preparation for a new water meter, we had to disconnect the water line to the ice maker. The cut-off valve by the refrigerator itself was 40 years old and would no longer completely stop the flow of water, so we went out to turn off the water at the meters. Imagine my surprise when the box containing the cut-off valve for our house water was completely filled with water! And so was the water meter box next to it.
A call to Austin Water got a guy out to examine the problem. He determined that the problem was a leak in one of the two water lines, and by cutting off first our water and then the neighbors, narrowed it down to the neighbors water line. So completely unrelated to my own project.
Gerry, the neighbor, had used a plumber (Carlos) before and so called him. We dug down and found the leak at a bend in the PVC line going to his house. We excavated out a much larger area, and dug down until the leak and the connecting pipes were exposed. One difficulty was that Gerry's cut-off valve would not completely cut off his water, so we had to turn it off at the meter. The next difficulty was that just below the leakin joint, was another joint -- a T joint that sent the water to his house and to his irrigation system. There was not enough room between the two joints to remove the leaking one and replace it, so both of them had to be removed and replaced. Plus we may as well replace the homeowner's cut-off valve at the same time.
That was accomplished. Of note is that the plumber replaced part of the PVC line with a new type of water line -- PEX. So their line goes from brass at the meter to a short piece of cast iron pipe, to a brass cut-off valve, to PEX to PVC to connect to the two outgoing lines.
We then had to reconstruct the dirt around the cut-off valves. Before we did that, we used a reciprocating saw to cut out the root that was growing under the meters and down along the water lines. We dug out a bucket of dirt from under the water meters.
We repositioned the irrigation box over the two cut-off valves.
and then poured about 150 pounds of sand over the actual plumbing lines.
Then we put the dirt back over the sand, and around the meter boxes, removing rocks and roots, and putting a layer of mulch over that to finish off the exterior.
