For those familiar with Persian folklore literature I’m sure you know the story of Mulla Nasreddin walking around outside his house in daylight looking on the ground for something he had lost. His friend is walking by and asks him where did you lose the item and Mulla says inside. The friend asks then why are you looking for it out here? Mulla says it’s too dark in there.
. . .
I’ve been trying to revive an old irrigation system at my house. There was one head that kept losing pressure. YouTube said there’s probably a leak.
So I started digging. No leak.
I dig some more.
This time around the other sprinkler head upstream of the one with low pressure. At least I though it was upstream. As it turns out the route that the piping takes between these two heads is not exactly what you’d call straight – one goes under the driveway slab and the other towards the street and they magically meet somewhere underground.
No leak.
I moved my car and started looking around and there was a slow stream of water on the opposite side of the driveway – a new driveway I had put in because the old one’s concrete was badly cracked and not exactly what you’d call on one plane.
I dig again. Yup, there is a leak.
Actually more than one. From below the slab in one place and sprouting up through the joints in the new driveway in a couple of other spots.
I keep on digging. Can’t find the pipe with the leak.
I look a bit more and the main line must go to the opposite side of the driveway first and then do some figure eights to feed the two heads independently. I resign myself to the fact that the leak is somewhere below the new driveway.
By now the yard is a scene out of Caddy Shack.
I stop digging.
Meanwhile there was another head on another zone nearby that had a small leak which I planned to replace and therefore had dug out a bit.
By chance I glance and there was part of a PVC pipe peaking through right next to this head but not connected to it.
Did I just find what Mulla Nasreddin had lost?
I start digging.
Just enough so I could cut the pipe in the off chance that it is the line that goes to the opposite side of the driveway. As I’m cutting, I’m thinking to myself that there ought to be water in this pipe.
Bone dry.
I had found another abandoned pipe earlier while regrading the front yard. (Long story, involving driving around a week with my truck filled with soil trying to figure out where I could dispose of it).
I take a break with a cold Topo Chico, cross my fingers and turn on Zone 1.
Eureka!
the City 