Waterworks--again

The past month or so have been hectic & stressful closing down my business. The past few weeks, when walking up the hill to the house, I would notice a large patch of very green, very large, very lush weeds and think "I wonder what is up with that?", then my brain would go off somewhere else. Finally, Saturday, I looked at it & said "Nuts, that is right over the main water line." Sure enough, the ground was wet.

So today, Mike, my friend & handyguy, came over to dig it out. We found the problem, something neither of us had seen before. There is a "T" in the main 2" line to take a 1" line to the house. In the "T", there are about 10 pinprick holes, each with its own little geyser of water. We have seen cracks in pipes and breaks in pipes, but never pinpricks.

Further digging revealed a large tree root from the elm tree 15 feet away. We are thinking that the pipe started leaking some time ago and the tree found it & grew the large root to take advantage of the jackpot. As the root grew, it started to press upwards and sideways on the main line, which then stressed the "T" and finally made more pinprick holes. But why little holes? The only thing we can think of was that the "T" was defective to start with.

So now Mike is sawing up tree root (I hate doing that, but have no choice) and taking inventory in my workshop to see if I have all the right pieces to fix this without a special trip to town. The water is turned off at the pressure tank at the well and I have 4000 gallons in the tank on top of the hill. It is a nuisance but not a catastrophe. Just another fun day in the hill country.