So, in preparation for some plumbing work, I had to find my curb box, where they turn the water off to the house. Most of my neighbors you can easily find their curb boxes, they are either right in the side walk in front of the house, or in the lawn, but uncovered.
Teresa did a survey of our lawn, but no visual sign of anything. I have a large metal stake and started probing the lawn for a bit each evening. After only about 15 minutes of probing I did find the shut-off for the gas, but no joy on the water all week. This is not a large area and I probed the hell out of it and pulled a good sized pile of rocks, some quite large out of the lawn. It looks like a deranged gopher had at my yard. Today I went and rented a metal detector. After practicing for a few minutes, finding the gas shut-off a few times, I started sweeping the lawn. I found a few more rocks. Then I kept getting a hit in this one area. I would get a hit, probe with the stake, but didn't find anything, a large rock, but no cap for the shut-off. I kept getting a strong hit though. I started digging in that area and eventually found out why my probing had not found the shut-off. The cap was missing and the pipe filled with dirt. So, when I was probing, I might have hit it, but only the edge of the pipe, so more probing wouldn't have shown me that there was a large flat cap there. I dug, scraped, and shop vacked out the dirt until I got down to the actual shut-off valve. I think I might have a problem as the head of the valve seems to be up against the side of the vertical pipe, possibly it has shifted. I think I have done as much as is required to save me the money of the time required to pay someone else to find it, but I am thinking I might leave it up to someone else to turn it off since, if they break it, it should be their problem, not mine, to replace. Nothing is ever easy on an 80-odd year old house. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [email protected] Tel: (412) 268-9081
