The main water line for the house starts at the town’s water valve at the front of the house, runs up the hill to the back of our house, across where the back porch is, and goes back down and in to the back of the house. This seems like an unnecessarily complicated path, but eventually we’ll get it to the house in a more direct route. The water line was working, so I was going to ignore it until we replace the entire line. That is, right up until we hit the line with a backhoe while digging up some rocks…

Over the years the various people who have touched this water line stuck to the golden rules of home repair, especially in this town:

  1. Repair the problem in the cheapest way possible.
  2. Don’t replace any other part of the problem that isn’t immediately broken, even if it’s likely to break in the near future.

At some point the water line at the main valve was replaced with PVC (presumably when the old steel pipe started leaking), but of course they didn’t replace the whole thing. The pipe went from the relatively new PVC pipe and transitioned into some kind of black plastic line:

which then transitioned back into slightly larger PVC with a very crunchy valve in a valve box:

which then transitioned into a short section of galvanized steel pipe, complete with a totally rusted and non-working steel valve, a rusty hose bib, and a capped-off section that in the distant past went who-knows-where:

and finally into 1/2″ copper line where it entered the house. No, I’m not kidding…

After the water pipe transitioned into copper, the pipe took a left turn into the house, connected to a flexible copper pipe like those used on water heaters, went back OUTSIDE the house (see the picture below), then continued on back into the house under the kitchen. To return to our original story, here is where we accidentally broke the pipe with a backhoe.

Before we get to that little mistake, though, one side-note: in the outside valve box with the crunchy PVC valve we found a ziplock baggie filled with pictures:

The pictures were mostly ruined with water and age:

Only one photo was even slightly visible, and seemed to show the PVC water line coming up to the house from the main valve. Apparently this little stash was a previous owner’s attempt at documenting the water line replacement. Nice idea in the days before USB flash drives:

OK, so back to breaking the water line. When I first looked at this copper piping that went into (and right back out of) the house I wrongfully assumed that this was an abandoned section of the water line that had previously been used to supply water to a water heater, but no longer carried water:

I had a friend and his backhoe doing some other work at this time, and there were some rocks and bricks near the house that I wanted to remove. As I thought the area was clear of pesky items such as water lines, I asked him to use the backhoe to dig out the rocks. It turns out this active water line ran right underneath the rocks…the backhoe isn’t exactly a precision tool, so it promptly ripped out both the rocks and the copper water line:

I could have stuck to the golden rule and replaced just this section of broken copper pipe, but I wantonly violated the rule and chose to dig out and replace the whole section. I dug back from the break, which is when I discovered the several types/materials of water line in this system. I went back to where the PVC from the main valve turned in to the black plastic pipe and cut everything out between it and the copper. After a 35-minute drive into town to get some PVC pipe and parts I replaced the whole 40-feet or so of pipe and the hose bib:

For those of you who have done some plumbing you may have heard of SharkBite plumbing fittings. When I went in to town to buy materials, however, the plumbing supply place only had the somewhat lesser-known “Wolv-Bite” knockoff brand. I was skeptical, but didn’t have any choice. Here’s the transition from the new PVC to copper:

The adapter seemed to work and didn’t leak, so good enough. At some future time I’m going to replace this line with Pex line all the way to the main water valve (and throughout the house) and have it enter the house at a much closer point anyway, so this temporary fix will work until then.

After checking for leaks and finding none I filled the trench back up with dirt, and I declare it temporary but done.