Should I be worried?

[jwcarlson]

A lot of this is tangential, but...
I'm currently getting over covid, pneumonia, and strep. Last week I noticed a little bit of water on the sidewalk in the front yard and figured it was something I spilled out of the trash or maybe the sump pump ran (but that is really unlikely) and would not have ended up on the sidewalk. In any event, I felt too cruddy to think much about it. Finally, on Saturday my parents came over to drop something off and I noticed there was more water and mom stepped into a spongey area in the yard.
So yesterday (Monday) morning I called the water company and told them there was a leak on the property. She, of course, asked if it was "gushing" and I said no, just a little bit of water seeping onto the sidewalk. So she wrote a work order and said someone would be out ASAP. A couple of hours later I get a call from the crew and he asks some questions about what piping comes into our house (it's copper). Interesting, he says, because they can usually "hear" a leak on the copper side. So he's thinking it might be on their side which he believes is plastic. He says he doesn't really know what's going on yet, but will keep digging and see what he can find.

So in my head, I'm thinking there's a guy at the house with a shovel excavating around the water shutoff in the front yard. I don't hear anything else and figure maybe they found some leak that was easy to fix and so didn't really bother giving me an update or whatever. I was going to run home and check at lunch, but that just didn't pan out with work. So I'm driving down our street when I get home and I see a "road work ahead" sign about halfway down our block. Interesting, but they are repairing a spot down at the corner where the street washed out around the storm drain and there's a little sinkhole in the street where the road fell in. Maybe it's related to that.

Well... it wasn't.

Here's my front yard looking across the street to the neighbors. It's tough to see from the picture, but they've torn out the street about 1/3rd of the way across the street.

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The hole in our yard.

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Tough to tell from the picture, but it's about 10'x6'x6' deep, maybe a bit deeper. It would be tough to crawl out of. Also have no idea what that cable or tube is at the bottom of the hole... hopefully it wasn't anything we needed! The gas comes in from the back of the house as does... everything but the water so far as I know. So perhaps it's an abandoned gas line or something.

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From a financial stand point, I'm thinking this is all on the utility's side because I've not authorized any repairs or anything. And they're nowhere near the shut off valve now (about 8-10' away and of course on the other side of the road). So I'm hoping I don't have to foot any of the bill lol.

My real question is, should I be concerned about my discus water? I did normal water change last night which was water from before they disturbed anything. We weren't told to boil or not use the water at this point. One interesting note is that about every 3-4 days the water is visibly cloudy coming out of the tap, don't notice it in normal use, but when I'm refilling my aging barrel, it's pretty obvious. This has been happening for a couple of months. Once it was so cloudy I actually pumped it back out and refilled it. Otherwise it's usually not too bad. I'm not worried about it as I've used the cloudy water (accidentally, just wasn't paying attention until it was in the tank). And there weren't any adverse effects.

What would you do? I guess my plan is to continue on until they tell us we need to flush our system or that we shouldn't use our water. Mostly just wanted to share what was kind of a funny story and mildly discus related.

[jeep]

It may not seem like it, but it's not a major event, lol... Usually when there is a boil order it's because a major supply line has burst and the possibility that contaminated water may have entered the closed system on a wide scale. Isolated issues like this may just require the lines being flushed until clear. Using a carbon block wouldn't be a bad idea...

In my area, I wouldn't have to foot the bill if the city did the work. If it were my issue, the city wouldn't even do the work. I would have to contact a plumber and pay them directly. Hopefully yours is the same!

[jwcarlson]

Oh yes, I know it's not a MAJOR problem.
It's a pretty major problem for my yard at this point, however!

Thinking about having them leave it empty when they're done and putting a pond in.

[Iminit]

Ok the gigs up! It’s us . Figured you’d like a pond out front lol. You guys are lucky by me we have to pay for all of that. Even though it’s the towns side that’s leaking. Happened to my neighbor a few years ago. As Brian said that’s just localized so the water should be fine. The water leaving at the leak will prevent stuff from coming in. The cloudiness may just be more air pushing the water. Usually get more bubbles in the winter.

[jwcarlson]

I know if you drive a fence post through your poly gas line in the backyard you have to pay for that. Which cost about $800.

I'm still not "out of the woods" as far as paying for that. But it would take some pretty convincing argument as to why I would be required to pay for something that's 30 feet from my property line, I guess. We'll see, though I am not too worried at this point. On the flip side it kind of "is what it is", a phrase I hate, but what the heck am I going to do about a sudden water leak?

A number of years ago our sewer plugged off and the plumbers did a ton of work clearing it. Ended up being roots from the neighbors tree towards the back of our property. There was talk of a miniexcavator and about 12' of dirt to move because it was plugged back at the Y where it joins the main sewer, blah blah...
The utility offers "line insurance" relatively inexpensively, which we bought after that. Then that is covered if it ever needs to be dug up. So I'm just slowly paying for the inevitable issue, but I'm OK with that. I put copper sulfate down the toilet periodically as the plumber said that does a pretty good job of killing roots and then they eventually "prune" as they die and can keep things clear for a lot longer. Which reminds me that I haven't done that in a bit!

Thanks for finally pushing me over the line for getting the pond I've always wanted, Tom! I'm sure my 90+ year old neighbor lady with a Bobcat in her front lawn is equally excited.

[jwcarlson]

Well, the saga is pretty much over. It was apparently all on "their" side. They must have ran new pipe under the road and over to the neighbors. I don't quite understand what was wrong, but I never happened across the workers because of my schedule. The neighbor lady has a new shutoff. Weirdly, they filled my hole with gravel and left 0" for dirt at the sidewalk and about 8-10" of space for the rest of the hole to be covered in dirt. Might be an interesting spot in the yard.

[RogueDiscus]

Glad it worked out. It's probably easier, cleaner for them to truck gravel around than dirt. I'd probably dig some out myself for more dirt room since I like to keep the yard nice.