Mud Holes, Forever

The week seemed to be dry and all the clothes were too clean.

But we got a chance to get a little dirty before the week was through. 

A few leaks popped up this week, some where passed off to other crews, but we fixed a few ourselves. Friday was the muddy one.

A reuse leak came in a few days before, but it was small so we let it go for a couple days.  Since it was reuse water, we shut (we thought) the main off so it could dry up (it didnt).

We headed out Friday morning to get it fixed. I hooked up to a trailer and we brought out our BobCat and a mud pump.

No matter where you go, make sure your hair is fabulous.

A few scoops taken out for exploratory reasons.

The main ended up not being off all the way, and the somebody turned the main back on with someone else in the hole. Main was shut off all the way, then the repair began. Ended up being a slipped fitting coming off the main tap saddle.

Mud hog pumping down the hole

Squeeeeezing the bucket between the main and other utilities.

I thought the main was off!?

After we got down to the break, I headed back to the yard with a trailer full of mud. That proved to be a task. All that muck settled driving back to the yard, and suction cupped itself to the trailer floor. I had to hand shovel it all out.

Brownies?

The mud did not move. At all. I even shook the tar out of the trailer and nearly broke the hitch.

After getting more dirty emptying the trailer than I did working, I loaded up some fresh dry dirt to back fill the hole, and headed back. Fuel first.

All the lights

Once back, both reuse services were built back in poly. Meter boxes were set, and we began to backfill. All in all the repair went the way it should.

Tee'd straight off the main.

Not much leak action this week, but I'm sure there will be more next week. I think we have a repair scheduled to remove a meter from a driveway, so that should be fun.

See you later!

More Mud Holes?

Couple more leaks passed by our way this week. Let me show you their features.

This first one was relatively small. A backflow company was attempting to change out a backflow, and in the process split a piece of galvanized pipe.  We had to cut back on it with a hacksaw, and install a new compression fitting with curbstop. We always try to fix our leaks under pressure, especially the small ones. Fixing the leaks under pressure prevents disruption of service to the customer, as well as prevents us from putting customers under a "Boil Water" notice.

Split right behind the curbstop in the galvanized pipe.

 

Next one was a doozy

 

 

 This leak came in at 4:30pm. Sometimes we let them ride till the next day, but in the case of leaks like this one, we decided to fix it immediately. The water main runs directly underneath the driveway, about where the split is between the dry and wet pavement. Trucks were loaded with dirt and limestone, trackhoe was loaded up, and off we went.

 

 

 

Driveway was cut to gain access to the ground and water main underneath. Once we got down to the main, the leak indeed up being a 5 inch split running inline with the pipe. Looked like the pipe had suffered a hit when it was originally installed, and just wore out over time. 

Strike first, strike hard. No mercy.







Ended up staying till 12am

 

 

The split section was cut out and replaced. Sometimes we can install a repair band around the main, but the position of the crack made prepping the pipe too difficult. Before wrapping a pipe, the ideal way to handle a split is to drill a hole at the edge of the split line, to prevent the crack from spreading. The split on this pipe was on the bottom, so we would have to submerge our drill in the water and mud to drill the pipe.

 

After the main was repaired, the hole was backfilled, and water service restored. Didn't get to keep the water on this time. Total repair took around 6-7 hours. Not that bad, but we could have shaved an hour off if we went straight to the clamps and replacing the piece of affected pipe.

 

A repair band was attempted first

Two hymax couplings were used, as well as a new piece of pipe.

Driveway secured.

Bye Felicia.



Captains Log: 1

To mix in the personal with the work, I'm going to start these "Captain's Log" posts. So we will start off with a little review of what's been going on these past few weeks.

Brethren Disaster Ministries (BDM)

A few weeks ago I drove down to Lorida, a small town south east of Sebring. I joined a group of people other from various places (Virginia, Delaware, Michigan) who are part of a group called Brethren Disaster Ministries. This group is part of the Church of the Brethren, but that is a story for another day. You can read more about them here: http://www.brethren.org/bdm/

We did roof repair and replacement on around 17k square feet of buildings. Patched holes and vents, and then installed metal roofing. I was the youngest one there, and I really enjoyed my time there. I hope to join up with a group again, as I really felt like I did something.



The Rabbit

My latest car is a 2007 Volkswagen Rabbit. 2.5 Inline 5 cylinder, Manual Transmission. Mundane by automotive standards, but a fun car none the less. I'm currently in the process of "sprucing it up", to either sell it or keep it as a run around. 125k miles and as of this typing, seems to be running like a top. I have a couple of things lined up for it to better improve it drivability and "fun-ability". All on the cheap.

 

 

 

That should catch you up to date in the personal life area for now, I'd like to go more into detail later on a few of the car stuff, but that can wait for later. Will update with a work related post here in the next couple of days.

 

Thanks for reading!



Ketchup

Ok, let's get everyone up to speed.

For the most part, everything is still the same. Still work at the same place, albeit performing a different duty.

My previous job title was "Field Service Technician" and I've pretty much summed up what those job duties were. Through people moving around, I have ended up in a spot titled, "AMI Supervisor", "AMI" meaning "Advanced Metering Infrastructure".

Not me, this guys is too excited.

What does that all entail? Well, to be honest, I'm kind of figuring that out on my own/making it what I think it needs to be.

Current duties keep my very busy and include the following.

• Inventory - In a nutshell, every meter, register, and related device goes through me. Whether it's new stock arriving, checking current inventory out to the Field Techs, or doing warranty returns, I'm the guy that scans in and scans out all of it.
• Truck Maintenance Records - I make sure our in house database is up to date with my departments vehicles. I'm currently using this information to try and put our trucks on a routine maintenance schedule.
• Quality Control - Making sure our guys are doing the correct work, at the correct address, with the correct parts. This is the most time consuming part of my job. Any error out the field gets sent to me. Sometimes it's small and an easy fix, sometimes it's not. Half the time I can get the guys to go back and correct it, sometimes I end up having to go.

I do a few other small things, but those are the biggies. It's a change of pace, and a welcomed one at that.

Currently, we are scanning in every single item me have, for the end of the fiscal year inventory. This is where things get scary. Basically, every item the finance department says we are supposed to have, we better have. So for now, I'll be spending my time in the meter bay, armed with a bar code scanner and a pack of pink stickers.

This is but a smidgen of our inventory

JR+PR 4EVA

Received  a little package in the mail yesterday. A rubber wedding ring!!!

I havent worn my actual wedding ring in quite some time. Mainly because it no longer fits, and also for fear of getting it stuck or caught on something at work and ripping my finger off.

I know this bothers my wife, so when some seemingly random add popped up on Facebook for an "Outdoors" wedding ring, I took a look. This was the result.

It's from a company called QALO (qalo.com). I think it's pronounced Kway-Low, or maybe Kwah-Low... I'm not sure, maybe Kwah-Loo?  They look to sell some pretty neat stuff, and for a pretty cool reason. I'd suggest checking them out.

I'm going to try it out for awhile, it was a nice price, and at least I know what size ring to wear now. No more dinging my ring up at work either!

TOAST Pt. 2 - Basic Load out

Welcome to "Tools of a Service Technician" Part 2.

See what I did there? I shortened the title so I could make a catchy acronym.

Today we will look at what you could consider my basic "load out" or what I commonly grab when I get out of the truck for a regular service ticket.

In addition to the previously talked about screwdriver, the next most common tool would be what I call the meter key. Some call it a turn on wrench, or turn on key, but I'm sure it goes by many names. This is the tool I use to open or close the valve (curbstop) that turns on or off your water. These can be bought at most hardware stores, but generally are a little smaller and lest robust than the one shown.

This type of key comes with soft yellow padded handles, but I pull them off. Reason being is that they don't last that long, and... If you look next to the meter key, you'll notice a metal bar. I insert that metal bar through the handle sometimes, when extra leverage is needed. Some of the older curbstops (the on/off valve) are quite old, and need a little something extra to turn them.

Next up we have the pin lock, and the pin lock key. Again, I think these go by another name (barrel lock), but that's what we call them. This is what is used to lock a meter in the case of a nonpay violation, or other general reason. The key goes into the lock, and pulls two ball bearings in. When the key is removed, the bearings push back out, and the lock is set. The locks are somewhat easy to remove, of you give it a decent effort. That little red cap goes on the lock to keep dirt out of it.

Lastly, we have the Touch Reader. This small hand held device actually performs a couple different tasks, but the main one is to electronically read the meters. There is a wire attached to the meter that runs to an MXU (that's a topic for another day, but is basically a broadcasting device for the meter readings). You can pull reads off the meter my touching the reader to the plug at the end of the wire. Now I'm old school, and a good percentage of the meters I read, I read by hand, but the Touch Reader comes in handy for when meters are underwater, or four foot deep and covered in dirt.

So that's the basic tools I use day to day, running what we call a normal service run. More tools to follow!

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.