Tuesday morning the street in front of my house, and in front of the house to my left, and in front of the three houses to my right, was filled with vehicles.  There were a van; a pickup truck with a trailer containing a Ditch Witch tunneling machine; a LARGE Vac-Con truck holding several thousand gallons of water and a system and tank for sucking up large amounts of water, dirt, and whatever else is in the way; a large dump truck; another pickup truck with substantial tool boxes mounted on the side; and most impressive at the moment I walked out there, a back hoe, sitting in front of my driveway.  

If all the other vehicles weren’t enough, that back hoe sitting where it was confirmed my worst fears.

By that time, the leak had increased to squirting up about an inch above the concrete surface, of the sidewalk, immediately adjacent to the driveway.  I suppose everyone figured as I did — try the sidewalk section first.

So, work to remove the sidewalk section that was actually a part of the driveway began.  The back hoe did a magnificent, and LOUD job of breaking up that concrete sidewalk section as the teeth of the rear bucket were repeatedly rammed downward.  I was standing at the edge of my garage and the entire driveway vibrated with each strike.    

Finally the section began to break up and the bucket scooped the first chunk out.  I wasn’t the only one surprised by its thickness, and one of the workers commented, “That explains it,” referring to the difficulty in breaking up the section, not to where the source of the leak was.  The concrete was 8 inches thick.

But that wasn’t where the leak was.

Now began the attack on the driveway apron, beginning with the side where the water was still bubbling up.  Again, concrete 8 to 10 inches thick, and this area was a lot larger than a sidewalk section.  It took quite a while to gradually break up and remove the thick concrete, and as the process slowly moved toward the middle of the apron, just about everyone was expecting that blue dot in the middle was the real source of the trouble.  It was also the most logical place to suspect because it was the point at which a line came off the main, went under the steet, and to the house across the street.       

The back hoe continued shaking the ground and setting off the howls of the neighborhood’s only real dog, usually rather quiet, and the yapping and yelping of the two ornamental caninies that would rather make noise than eat.

As the concrete was gradually broken and removed, its place was quickly taken by a pool of dirty water.

Yet there was no sign of the source of the leak.  No telltale bubbling or swirling, just an increasingly large opaque brown pool.

To be continued…