We Inherit a Swamp

Yesterday as I was mowing the lawn I noticed a huge wet spot in the front yard that my mower just didn't want to roll through. After jumping up and down and splashing water where there should just be grass, I realized we had a leak in our water line. After having a guy come out from the city and look at it we found out two things:

1. The city isn't reponsible for anything between the sidewalk and the house.
2. A plumber will charge around $6000-$8000 to fix the leak (most of which is digging.)

Knowing Amy's brother Scott does all kinds of maintenance work on yards and knows a few people who do plumbing and heavy machine work, we called him to see if he could help out. By noon today we had rented a backhoe and had a ten foot long trench six feet deep so we could repair the hole. After getting some parts from Home Depot Scott replaced the bad portion of pipe and we refilled the hole.

It's not pretty because of the mud right now, but we ended up paying a total of $900. I think we came out of it pretty well. ...Now we just need to repair the crack we found in the basement wall that's been letting rainwater seep in.