Fixing a Hole

[billroper]

The City of Des Plaines finally came out to fix the hole in our back yard. You may have seen the photos that jeff_duntemann posted when he stuck his camera down there and started shooting. Here are a few more as the repair proceeded.

	Bobcat Gretchen mentioned to me after she went downstairs that there was a Bobcat in our backyard. We'd been expecting one ever since the little flags from Julie -- which is the local service that marks utility lines, not our younger daughter -- appeared in our yard for the second time. The first time, they didn't dig, probably because of the smell of gas down there. They may or may not have gotten it fixed, but they were digging now.
	And the Hole As you can see, Bobcats make nice neat holes in the yard.
	A Big Old Mound of Dirt Of course, the contents of the hole have to go somewhere.
	The Collapsed Pipe And here's what the pipe looked like after -- I'm reasonably certain -- they cleaned up the edges and cut away the loose bits.
	The Repair The repair seems to consist of putting in an insert and mudding around it.
	Stealing Crackers So we went to lunch. And no photo shoot is complete without a picture of Katie and Julie. In this case, Julie is rather concerned, because Katie has circumnavigated the table to come steal the oyster crackers from her.
	Filled In The hole is filled in now, but the continued presence of the electric sheep suggests that we'll be seeing them again. This is good, as the spot is currently a bit of a mess with shards of clay pipe and such on the surface. We'll see what happens next.

Comments

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Now is this the pipe from which you suspect the gas smell is issuing, or is that another issue still needing to be fixed?

[billroper]

The gas smell is coming from the drain connected to the pipe, but the gas is being leaked (if it still is) from somewhere else and traveling down the pipe to our yard. I'll know more when I spend some time down there on a calm day.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

The last time we had that problem, they estimated the actual leak was several miles away. It was also a very cold winter with the ground frozen solid.

[billroper]

They found one leak that was across the street behind us, but that doesn't appear to have been the only source unfortunately.

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

Julie -- which is the local service that marks utility lines, not our younger daughter --

OHHH! Confusing mental image ticket resolved now. :)

[spiritdancer]

Yay for the hole being fixed (finally)!

And another yay - it looks like daisyknotwise has been making progress with Katie's dreadlocks :)

[billroper]

The situation with the dreadlocks does seem to be improving. :)

[dave-ifversen.livejournal.com]

Is that a sewer line? (Looks like it in the pictures...) A break like that should have left an impressive sinkhole.

[billroper]

Storm sewer, yes. And it was a relatively small sinkhole. The one in our neighbors' yard was much larger.

jeff_duntemann posted a sinkhole picture here.

[jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com]

For people who've never visited the Ropers': The drains are at the low point in the yard, which would be a swamp or (in a very wet year) a pond without a way to drain away accumulating water. There are three round grates, and they appear to be connected by a largish clay pipe about four feet down, which takes the runoff Somewhere Else. I have a theory about the sinkhole: The clay pipes are just fired clay, and thus slightly water permeable. Also, they're not far enough down underground to be completely immune to freezing in a bad winter, especially if cold air can flow down the grates into the pipe. So a few bad winters probably froze some of the water in the walls of the clay pipe, causing the pipe to fragment and eventually cave in.

I wish (for the sake of their poor back lawn) that I had more faith that this will not happen again in a few years.