our ranch has a long gravel driveway with separate paths going to the barn vs the house. sometimes i get lazy (empowered?) and cut corners to feel like a badass.

big. mistake.

"never drive over water lines" said the plumber ($472) who showed up at my house, just a few hours after i called my utility's emergeny hotline to report a disruption.

in situations like this, the city's responsibility ends at the meter. a technician came out, shut off our water from the street, took a look at what happened, and told me this was likely due to the overnight freeze on Christmas Eve. he said my truck rolling over it was a coincidence. we'll see.

with a quarter mile of pipe running from the street to this location, i figured we're in for a doozy. first stop: Google Maps to call every local plumber.

lucky for me, the 2nd guy i called came right over to diagnose the problem. while he dug around with a shovel, i hung out at our meter and cracked the water on/off during a live phone call.

diagnosis: at the T-point where our piping splits in two directions (house, barn) the connection towards the barn had cracked, thus the gushing water.

the plumber was prepared for a simple fix -- replacing the coupling at the 3-way joint. but i asked if we could do an upgrade: separate valves for the house vs barn, and ground-level boxes for easy access in the future.

Jed the Plumber said "well, this is a once in a lifetime chance..." and after a quick trip to Home Depot we had the materials needed ($75) to improve our system.

by the way, here are all the holes he had to dig to pinpoint the problem.

Jed replaced the 3 way connector, added valves on both sides, then began measurements to insert an extender. this is basically a piece of PVC that can expand around 6 additional inches. for situations like this an extender is perfect, as you can telescope it to fill a gap.

unfortunately, we botched the extender step due to the slight bow in the top/bottom lines giving us a less than perfect fit. to solve this he did a 90' offset. this is where you reset your connection "bind" by going up and around the imperfect gap.

nobody will ever see this, so whatever. we back-filled the surrounding area with spare gravel and sand already on our property, because according to the plumber this ground will never be as strong as it once was, following the leak's unsettling of clay.

Jed finished at 10p after it had been dark a few hours, so i got back to work first thing the following day. since this system is a couple feet deep, more boxes were needed to create a clean passageway from the ground level to the valves.

as i added each box extension i packed in new dirt (mud) around it.  when i finally made it to the surface i used our level to make them even.

running water is cool and all, but what are we supposed to do with this ruined patch of yard?

landscape a new island, of course!

like 99.9% of the projects on this ranch i've never done this before so forgive my "taste." here's how it all went down.

first stop, Home Depot. duh.

next i gathered all the remaining spare pavers from our property to define the edges.

then i began adding mulch. here's the first bag.

our 3 bag calculation was just enough, so i put the whiskey barrel on the small mound i created and leveled it.

by the time i potted the small tree, it was dark again. this has now become a 3-day project.

on New Years Day we wrapped things up with a homemade Kulp Estates sign. i cut a 24x16" piece of 1/2" birch plywood from the power tool shelf leftover pile, then attached some chain ($6.27) and fasteners ($4) from Tractor Supply. to top it of we sprayed a couple coats of waterproof polyurethane ($7). the spray paint was $5.

with just a sign and bush in this big island, things were looking a little sparse. a bit thirsty. a bit like the island was made by someone who has never made an island before.

and then we found the wheelbarrow. this was covered in disgusting mud and dead plants elsewhere on the property, so we put it to good use.

as you can see, the immediate area  surrounding our island is still in rough shape. we'll patch it in the spring when bermuda grass can grow again.

although it sucks to blow up your water supply, at least we managed to improve our new guest first impression on the drive-in. we also learned a valuable lesson: never drive on water lines!