I’m having a pressurised water system (I.e. Megaflow) fitted - therefore the existing 15mm main wasn’t big enough and also was also leaking somewhere.

I thought this would be an easy job, especially as I have a mate with a digger - turned into a nightmare. We managed to break existing water feed into the house, then I dropped my phone into the resulting puddle and then finally went through the gas main. This is all despite me doing the “spotting” and me thinking I knew where the gas pipe is - unfortunately it became obvious that the pipe had been fitted using a “mole” and was only 300mm below the surface and certainly not in a straight line from there we knew it started at the house.

This is the scene after a diy job with a digger, It was a Saturday night, so went down the pub and left the gas board to sort the pipe out - the repaired gas main can be seen amongst the mess the following morning.

I managed to coax some life out of my trusty nokia, following its dunking in the ditch and managed to phone Tom who is far more experienced than me, after 10 minutes of expletives explaining how we had made a complete pigs ear of it, he manually dug the rest out - which was a good job, as he came across a 12” main sewer and came across the gas main again, and note the existing copper feed directly in the mud.

Hastily repaired 15mm water supply, and our friend the gas main again, which no doubt we would of gone through a second time!

Note how it doesn’t go in a straight line - never assume it does!

12/11/2012 - Update: Just got the bill for repairing the pipe £500 ouch!

Driveway

After digging the driveway up for the water main and also as a result of all the building work - I decided I needed to spend some cash making a start on the front drive. To be honest I was hoping to avoid spending any money on the drive until next year, but I couldn’t live with walking through thick heavy clay everyday. So whilst I had the digger handy and someone that knew how to use it, I decided to scrape away all the old tarmac, gravel and general bad ground to see what we had.

But before that could start, I had one last heavy delivery - my lathe,welder and milling machine that has been stored in my mum’s garage for the last year. As ever my mate Kev was on hand to help out!

Then Tom dug the whole thing out - leaving me with 60 tons of muck to get rid of. There was tarmac, gravel and all sorts of random stuff in there - various patch-up jobs over many years I suspect. Mark’s brother Paul took it all away for me.

With it all dug out - the next job was 36 tons of crushed concrete. Paul the grab driver said that he was starting to sink into the muddy drive - especially where we had dug the new pipe in.

So when driver for the crushed concrete turned up - I specifically told him to avoid the left hand side - unfortunately he managed to sink up to his axles and was left stuck with 18 tons on board. Cue MUCH swearing and frantic manoeuvring, digging wth the digger etc - all to no avail. In the end we had to call in a favour with Paul to tow out what was essentially a competitors lorry out of my drive - with his lorry. So thanks Paul - I owe you one for that. Turns out this was the same driver who got stuck the previous week round my mates place.

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