NON PAY CUT OFF

It happens.

For one reason or another you didn't pay the water bill... and now your meter is off and locked.

     While there are many customers who dread "Cut Off" day, I can assure you, we utility workers, dread it just as much if not more. Non Pay Cut Offs are the most hated thing I do. I find it utterly depressing and would rather do just about anything else instead of them. When I show up in your front yard, I'm not there because I want to be. Trust me. 

     I think one of the reasons I loathe Non Pays, is the conflicting position it puts me in. On the one hand, I am (trying) to maintain a professional, polite attitude. On the other, I am weathering the verbal assault being hurled at me front behind the security of your front door. Now I am a pretty easy going guy, and for the most part these things just roll of my back. However, on occasion we have what I like to call a bad day. This is generally when customer after customer just so happens to be home, or out in their yard, and every single one of them want to express the thoughts about you and your company... in great detail. It's very hard to keep some sort of smile or at least neutral attitude when your being vebally attacked. At least for me.

     I wish you all would realize that I/we haven't singled you out, to turn off just your water. On average, I'd say you are one of 300-600 people getting shut off. On top of dealing with customers who are in waiting, there's dogs, other noisy neighbors defending their meters, that awkward feeling when a kid leaves the home you are about to shut off for school... etc. 

    I don't know what I'm trying to say here. I guess I'm just trying to tell you that your service techs are just doing their job, and its not always roses and sunshine for us. We don't enjoy turning your water off. 

Except for you Ned.... Pay your bill.

Now.

Tools of a Field Service Technician - pt. 1

The Screwdriver. The one tool I truly feel lost without.

This particular screwdriver is a Husky - 3/8 in. x 16 in. Square Shaft Standard Slotted Screwdriver with Butyrate Handle, readily available at Home depot.

The driver has many purposes, but its main use is to open meter box lids. Auxiliary tasks include positioning meters, prying things open, widening meter tail-to-meter gaps, canine defense, and intimidating customers. Others carry variations, but I prefer the feel and length of this particular driver. So much so, that I generally carry two on my truck.

I tend to lose them a lot ( I average two a month), so if you live in Clay County, and are a rate payer, keep an eye out for one of these poking up in your yard. You can keep it, consider it a gift from your local utility.

This is the first in a series of tools I use, that I will randomly stick in with my regular posts. Let me know if there is anything specific you would like to see!

Great Day in the Morning

And so starts another work week. Who knows what this week will bring.

Being an individual who is graced with a work truck, and a work load that keeps me driving, I have plenty of time to think. Sometimes I even get philosophical.

I consider it to be one of the perks to my job, as I am one who enjoys pondering different things, and mulling over old and new ideas a like.

I think we should all find a point sometime during the day, just to ourselves. It's good to take some time out to reflect upon where you are in life, and refocus you thoughts.

Third times a charm?

I just merged my old blog "Standard Grade" with this one, so some of the posts have showed up.


I need to blog more.

Pipe Dreams

One of my most favorite things to do is to do what I do for a living, on a day off. :(

tl:dr - Something broke, I was a slacker in fixing it. It cost a lot of money, so then I fixed it.

A few weeks ago, I noticed some water pooling up around my sidewalk. Now, you'd think someone who works in a water utility would immediately look into this... buuuuuuutt... no. I just looked and went, "Huh. Look at that. Wounder what that could be.", and went about my business.

2 days go by, and I'm walking to my mailbox. Water's still there. At this point, I realize that it hasn't rained in  at least a week, and that I don't have my irrigation system hooked up. This must be a leak. I realize that there is water slowly coming from my irrigation heads.

UNAUTHORIZED FLOW

Through my extensive background training in irrigation and leaks, I immediately knew what to do. I turned the water off at the backflow and said "Forget about it." Until the bill... $300.00 plus. That got my attention. So I decided to fix it, and ask JEA for a leak credit.

After digging holes all over the yard, I finally traced the irrigation pipe back to the solenoid. I had to do this because for some reason, someone thought it was a good idea to place each individual solenoid in its own zone, rather than place them all net to each other, in the same box. I dug it up, made the repair (with some difficulty, thanks to tree roots) and got it all running again.

Check out the pics.

The culprit valve.

Laying out my supplies. No spoons here.

How it was supposed to go

Everything was going good until the picture above. Notice the gap. Now everywhere else, this wouldn't be too much of a problem. Cut your piece of pipe to length, glue and slip it in. The problem I ran into was that there is a massive root (about the size of my arm) on top of that white pipe, and another root growing vertically next to it, basically killing any chance I have of flexing this pipe into submission. Then, on the other side of the new valve, the pipe turns into 1 inch. This pipe 90s up and back, then goes into a Tee. No flex from that either. What to do?

Get angry and rip the whole thing out of the ground, breaking the previously mentioned 1 inch side. Then give up and come back the next day. 

So I cut back on the pipe, and did it right. Everything works, and now we wait for JEA.

The finished product

Beautiful. <3

Thanks for reading, and tighten up every chance you get.

"Just" a Toilet Leak

This is what a toilet that runs "some of the time" looks like.

Just because you can't hear it running, doesn't mean it isn't. In fact, by the time you hear it running, the toilets probably been leaking for weeks.

Captain's Log

Sup.

Someone told me that the life of a utility worker would make for an interesting blog.

So here we are. Spoon.