New House Blog: Episode XCV - Problematic PVC

There's something about old PVC - something thin and fragile and easily-breakable.  Or maybe it's just the old PVC that we have discovered buried in various places around our Lovely House.  As mentioned in this Episode, digging up a random piece of PVC while planting a peach tree lead to a simple PVC repair, and that simple repair led to a much larger project.

The Leak

The logical place to start is with the leak.  While excavating the random PVC in the picture below (while digging the gigantic hole for our new peach tree), we accidentally punctured a different, water-filled PVC pipe.  This punctured PVC pipe runs out to the hose hookup by our food garden, and we use said hose hookup pretty much every day in the dry season.

We initially dealt with said leak by turning off the water to the affected pipe, but we knew this alone would not fix the leak.

A little digging revealed the extent of the damage - not much - and it looked like it would be a simple cut and splice job, with some blue PVC cement thrown in.

We spliced in a new section of PVC, let everything cure overnight, turned on the water, and BAM!  New leak.  D'oh!  But it wasn't leaking from our repair - it was a new break in the old PVC.  Ok.  No big deal.  We'll just do another repair and be done with it.

As you can see, we thought we were done with it a few times, but new leaks kept popping up. Again, our repairs were good, but the old PVC kept springing new leaks.  At this point we realized that we needed to change our course of action, and we looked at the old PVC a little closer to see why it kept springing new leaks.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this Episode, there's something about old PVC.  And the something is that it is paper thin and it breaks at the least provocation.  Thus, our repairs were only going to keep causing more new leaks in the old PVC. Time for plan B.

Plan B

Faced with the situation above, we decided to replace the whole length of PVC from the initial break point out to the hose hookup by the food garden.  The first step in this replacement was, of course, digging up the old pipe.

No, that curving trench is not a result of the camera lens - the trench did really curve quite a bit, as did the old PVC pipe.  The pre-Bishopians, instead of doing the sensible thing (using some PVC elbows), simply curved the pipe and buried it with a lot of built-in tension, which contributed to its fragility.
Note that the punctures in this photo are from our excavation. We saw no need to be careful in this case.

At left is the old hose hookup.

Here you can see some of the new materials.

Here is a close-up of some flexible PVC.  The sign at the store said it was a new product, and it seemed like a perfect fit for our particular project.

BYA* Update

Yes, folks, we're still excavating ancient artifacts at our Great House.  Five years since taking ownership, and ancient items still turn up!  It's amazing!  We could probably dig up all of our yards, run all of the dirt through some sieves, and find all kinds of good stuff!  But that would use up all of the excitement of discovery at once, and we think it's best to spread that excitement out over time, so we will continue our excavations at their current pace.

These first items were excavated from the old PVC trench, I think.  At least one of them was, I'm pretty sure.  Anyway, we see more rusted metal, which seems to be a theme with pre-Bishopian artifacts.

Next up is this rusted fastener of some sort.  It seems to have some threading on various parts, and there is possibly a nut and washer rusted onto the main piece.

This little fellow was dug up from the old PVC trench.  It's proof that the pre-Bishopians at least knew of PVC elbows.  It doesn't tell us why they chose not to use any such elbows in this case. Perhaps they only had the one?

We conclude this BYA update with this mysterious glass jar.  The foxtail is included for scale.  As you can see, it's not a large jar, and it appears to have some threading for a lid.  I don't remember quite where I dug it up, but there were no other jars nearby. My guess is that the pre-Bishopians traded for this jar, as there is no evidence, yet, of any glassworks at our Archaeological House.  

*As a reminder, BYA is short for Back Yard Archaeology.

Plan B Continued

Back to plan B.  We're now at the actual installation phase, and all went according to plan (plan B).

Look at those nice, straight, un-bent lengths of PVC.  It's beautiful!  And that flexible bit of PVC really made the job a lot simpler.

This is the view from the hose hookup end.  Note the old PVC alongside the new.  We decided to leave it there to provide a mystery for any future archaeologists who might dig up this section of non-leaky PVC.

This is the new hose hookup. Look at that fancy brick work.

After testing the new line for leaks we buried it all - old, new, formerly-leaky, non-leaky.  After filling in the trench we used our trusty tamper to tamp down the dirt.  We did such a marvelous job that we can't tell exactly where the trench is anymore.

While working on this project I listened to a lot of episodes of the old radio show X Minus One on my iPod.

Ending Bonus Photo

I saw this earlier today, and I think it speaks for itself.

Happy Independence Day!

   bIsh