When the driveway was repaved and the water main issue happened, we ended up with a large hole behind the garage where the main line splits. To provide better control, we put in a separate pipe to handle the hydrant when running the new main pipe, but the poor seal job the driveway crew did led to busted valves in the sprinkler control box. This meant everything leaked profusely and we couldn’t actually turn on the water to the hydrant.
Enter our gardener. When I asked him to look at the irrigation box, he also looked at the open hole. His immediate tone was one of great displeasure, and he at first thought Agent Smith or I had done the original plumbing work. I assured him it was the crew who broke everything and that they were not plumbers. He relaxed then and said a few disparaging things about them not being good at plumbing, to which I pointed out they had just put things together as best they good.
Now I realized long ago that I was prejudiced towards my gardener not for any racial or ethnic reasons, but for the simple fact that he used to work for the previous owners. After almost two years though, I’d mostly overcome that and we rely upon him for guidance and to help fix things when they break. With this little project that so irked him because it was not done right, the last vestiges of prejudice just faded away.
A few days later he arrived to fix the issue. Of course he arrived on a day when it was over 100 degrees out and was all set to dig to expose more of the pipe that needed resealing, but then I pointed out if he came back the next morning, Agent Smith would be more than happy to use Bambi to excavate the space. So that is what happened, and instead of spending a few hours digging through the clay soil to expose the pipe and refit everything, it took less than an hour to redo the plumbing and fix and adjust the sprinklers out under the fir tree. As a bonus, he installed two valves to prevent backflow,
We allowed everything to rest for a couple days to make sure there were absolutely no leaks, and Agent Smith then used Bambi to cover it all up. Now all we have to do is create a border around the christy boxes; we will probably just use some concrete rubble since we have oodles of it.
