Slow Leak

We found a water leak from the main line a few days ago.  They told us they turned off the water, but we continued to get a steady flood in our backyard, so we called them to come out again.  Again they told us they'd turned off more valves, and again we continued to get a steady flood.  They told us they'd figure it out when they finally came around to do the work.  Yesterday at 8:00am (on the dot, which I find interesting) they rang our doorbell, ready to work.

 It wasn't hard to figure out where the water was coming from when you looked for the air bubbles.  They dug and found the hole to never truly drain.  See the pump to get the water out, the dirty spot soaking into our grass? (Which is still there and still wet to this day.  It makes me sad that they had to ruin our backyard to fix this)

 After about 30-minutes of continuously rising water, they decided that all of the valves they had off were not helping.  They went to de-pressurize the whole neighborhood.

From our dining room window.  Directly in the center of the above picture you can see the pressurized water shooting 6'+ into the air.  This happened for over and hour.

 Once the "Old Faithful" didn't produce as much of a show, they came back and dug out a little more before heading to lunch.

 This leak is the culprit. 

With the water turned off, they were able to dig out more.  That hole was now large enough to have a grown man up to his armpits lifting that heavy, wet mud almost above his head onto the pile.  They got it all fixed (that man was soaking wet by the time he was done, but said he didn't have time to wait for the leak to stop so he cut the pipe and allowed it to gush out on him while he worked), buried, and told us they'd come back in a few days with fill dirt, since the leak-- which most likely had been there for years and just manifested above ground-- had eroded away quite a bit.

 They did a really good job backfilling it, but Randy and Keilie worked for another hour making it exactly level.

I'm glad this is all fixed.  We have plans for this space.  Next order of business is to rip out the pond that I love the idea of, but not the actual thing.