Thurs evening I first noticed the water springing out of the road and back into a city drain. Friday's snow storm came and went over the weekend...

On Monday, we had a whole different crowd show up.

The policeman arrived first, along with the contractors and the people from the city.

The city records are kept on hand-written cards. The contractors in the field had a copy of the front of the card. It shows what the city knows about the pipe that they're going to dig up.

. . . .

It says that this pipe was laid on September 28, 1917. It is a 3/4 " L.L. (which they told me means Lead Lined). Apparently "Steel Pipe" was Lead Lined back then. So today, the contractor is opening up from the main to the shutoff valve for my house. They will re-lay this pipe with a 3/4" copper pipe.

Before they excavate, however, they called Keyspan, a.k.a. the gas company. Keyspan attached a device called a PipeHorn to the gas line, which sent out a modulating signal. They then sensed for the device, and marked the gas line in the ice with a yellow spray can.

Verizon is also called, and they state in red that there are no phone cables buried nearby. The highway division of Melrose Public Works came by (interesting truck).

They were ready to dig, and had to wait for the red dump truck to arrive, so that they would have a place to put the dirt from the hole.

It didn't take too long to get a nice square sized hole in the road. They pumped the water out of this hole, and got down to the city main water line.

The excavation now becomes a plumbing task. Congratulations to that plumbers as he gets the leak under control.

This takes the house off line. I had showered early in anticipation.

The road was next sliced and the old pipe was dug out.

When they want to move the back hoe to the other side, they drive it around the block. In this case, they then turned the hole 90 degrees, and dug between the sidewalk and the side of the street. They knocked out the old city valve to my house, and ran the new copper pipe into a new coupler into my existing iron pipe.

They ran the line, dumped gravel into the hole, swept it a bit, and tested that I had water. Tomorrow at 8:30 they'll bring out the asphalt truck.

The contractors left, the city inspector left (after putting some gravel into another hole which opened up in Washington street today), and the policeman opened the road back up for traffic.

Complete Monday Pictures with zoom

That's the story for February 9, 2004!

-- Glen

=> Onward to Tuesday, Feb 10