The Great Flood of Ought Eight

Just as I got out of a meeting and got back to my desk at work, I received an urgent message from Michael’s Mommy. While in the process of listening to that message, she calls and leaves another one.

I call back immediately. She reports that the sprinklers are still on. It’s eleven o’clock, and I know they went on around seven AM. What the heck is going wrong?

Calmly, I begin to give the remedial course on how to shut off the valve power. She cuts me off before I get a full sentence out: she already knows where the box is and has already tried every button and knob in there, giving particular attention to the ones labeled “off” and “stop” and “clear”.

While I’m listening to her describe her countermeasures, I see an urgent email pop up from my boss about possibly traveling overseas to help with some problem there. Jeez, when it rains it pours. Or floods.

Knowing where my bread is buttered, I rush home as quickly as possible.

When I get there, I can see the back yard sprinklers are still merrily blasting away at full force, drenching the yard and turning the south end into a bog. By my reckoning, we won’t need to water again until June of 2010.

So I go check the valve control box. Everything looks find there. Shutting off the valve power does nothing. It’s like trying to shut off the M5 once it tapped into the Enterprise’s warp engines.

Next step, find the water valves that shut off the supply. Wading in the pond that was our backyard and being intermittently drenched by the dutiful little sprinkler heads, I wasn’t as effective at finding the valve. Instead, I retreated to the relative safety of the deck. Still no sign of a local valve, so I headed out front to find what I believe to be the main shut off.

From what I remembered, it’s right by the lamp post. A rectangular, rusty metal cover set into a concrete divot. After brushing off the bark chips, I pull the lid off. Inside, it’s entirely filled with bark chips. Michael has been hard at work cramming them down the hole in the lid. That’s what he occupies himself with while I’m sweeping the driveway.

Dig as much as that out as possible, brush away the black widow spiders, try the valve. It won’t budge. Have to go get some large metal object to turn it with. I try first with the sprinkler valve rod thingy; it’s the one that has the triangle on top connected to a two foot downrod and ending in a two-pronged fork. I think every garage has one of these, though most are vestigial.

Fail.

I have to find a stronger, more grabby type implement. I find a long pole and wedge that in there to try to move the lever.

Fail.

The stupid valve lever isn’t an easy thing to access; it’s on the side of a pipe, and rotates on an axis that’s horizontal. It’s designed to be really hard to work. In that, the designers have succeeded.

Finally, on my third try, using the largest monkey wrench in my possession, I have success in budging the valve. First a little, then more. I have to repeat my mantra: righty tighty, lefty loosy.

Then at last I hear the sprinklers going off, and my wife calling out something I’m suppose to hear, but can’t. When I get up close, she brightly exclaims that she had overturned buckets on each of the sprinkler heads so I wouldn’t get soaked if I couldn’t get the valve in front to shut off. I hadn’t realized we had that many buckets, until I saw that most were toys from Michael’s sand box.

With the threat of being drenched finally abated, we began our search for the shutoff valve. We moved stumps and jabbed around for the light green rectangle, but to no avail. I poked and prodded the ground every two feet or so. Nothing.

Then I got a brilliant idea: going through the archives of old digital photos of the kids in the back yard. There’s bound to be a shot of the ground over where the valve cover was.

So inside I went, and started rifling through the computer backup disks to find the photo archives. I found a gazillion various goofy scenes of the kids playing, dancing around, tossing a beach ball, enjoying the slip-n-slide. It felt like I was searching for hours, looking for just the right angle of the backyard in its barren, prototype state.

Finally, just about to give up, I clicked on a random video that looked promising. This one was one of my attempts to catalog the yard after we’d just moved in, and to describe future plans for improvements. Then, during one pan, there it was: the valve cover. My wife and I noted the spot: directly in front of the west most blueberry bush.

Armed with knowledge I tromped outside, slogged through the mud and uncovered it immediately. Finally leveraging it open, I felt a little like Indiana Jones discovering the well of souls.

But instead of a belch of stagnant air, I was greeted with a gout of muddy water. The valve assembly was completely submerged. The quantity of water I’d just been exposed to, coupled with the urgency of the situation and the previous rain of the sprinklers forced me into the house to use the restroom. And of course, I completely forgot that the water main was shut off, so flushing the toilet didn’t work so well, nor did my attempt at hand washing.

Since I could not see the valves through the murky depths, I was forced to bail it out. I grabbed the nearest bucket, a nice sunny yellow with a pink handle, and scooped up a load. My wife stood near to help out in whatever way she could.

“Sorry if I get you wet,” I said, winding back to toss the bucket full of muddy water, and summarily hurling the entire contents directly onto my own back.

I silently forgave her for bursting out laughing at my ironic statement.

After a few more careful bailings, the valve came into view. I shut that one off, and then hurried out front and levered the water main back on.

Listening carefully, I heard no sprinklers come on, nor any report from my wife.

It was then that I noticed the customer water main valve, an easy-access valve head about a foot away from the water meter, where I’d frustrated myself earlier. Will have to make a mental note of that for future emergencies. Ah, who am I kidding? I’ll forget that it even exists before I get up the next day.

At least the emergency is over. I’m soaked to the bone, muddy and cold, and I have a daunting repair task ahead of me. But that’s weekend guy’s problem.