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Derek Rose - Handyman

I am now, at least in my mind, an official member of the handyman’s club.

One, maybe two of you might remember my post about our water leak from a couple of days ago. We finally got a few estimates, which ranged from $900 to $200 (if we bought the supplies and rented a ditch witch), which all seemed pretty darn expensive to me. Then we got some advice from friends and family, and we figured that if we were renting the ditch witch and buying all of the supplies anyway, we may as well just fix the thing ourselves. So we did. Not completely by ourselves though. My grandpa and grandma were kind enough to make the trip down from Nashville to help me, since I was kind of afraid of the ditch witch, and didn’t really know where to dig or what to do.

Anyway, we got started on Sunday morning and dug a few holes, by hand, trying to find some wet ground or some indication of where the leak might be. We dug some holes about 3 1/2’ deep, and finally found the line. But the ground was dry so we kept digging. Eventually we were pretty confident of where the leak was, or at least where it wasn’t, and decided to try out the ditch witch. It was a walk behind one, and was pretty cool to use. It’s like a giant chainsaw for the ground.

We cut up most of the yard, and decided to just replace the pipe from just outside the house, to about midway down the yard, since we figured the leak was between those two points. After some more ditch witching, getting the ditch witch stuck, getting it unstuck, doing a lot of digging by hand, making a few trips to Lowe’s, etc., we finally got the trench dug. After that it was a relatively simple process to replace the pipe. Just cut it, stick the little joiner piece in each end, jam them together and tie them tight with a couple of clamps. We tested it, and no leaks! Hooray!

What was originally going to cost us up to $900, ended up costing $140 to rent the ditch witch for the weekend and about $20 for supplies. Doing it yourself really is cheaper!

I really must thank my grandpa a lot though, he was a big help and I couldn’t have done it without him. He also bought a bunch of tools that I didn’t have, to make the process a little easier. My grandma also did a good job of documenting the event with her camera, and supervising from the porch. And of course I can’t forget to mention my wife, who dug a few shovel fulls before saying she was tired. ;) Oh, and Rye, our dog, who tried her hardest to understand what we were doing, and even tried to do some of the digging herself. It was a nice thought, even though she sometimes dug the wrong way and started filling the hole back up instead of emptying it. I’ll probably post some pictures when my grandma sends them to me.