Water

Hole in the Yard

The City of Beaverton recently started putting in new sewer mains and pipes all the way up to each house in my neighborhood. The contractor for this was Dunn Construction, who have been extremely professional in my opinion during this whole time. They have taken extreme care not to block my driveway unless absolutely necessary, and the foreman has been forward with all my questions.

But they were just not able to take down a tree that was in the way. They at first told me that they would only need to dig a 2 foot by 2 foot hole so no need to do so. I came home to find this:

In case it’s not obvious (and there was more done later,) the 2×2 foot hole turned into a huge trench two to three feet deep, along the length of that house wall, and surrounding three sides of the tree with the roots totally removed. So this tree had literally one root instead of four supporting it. Not too big of a deal, we cut it down the next weekend and ALMOST fell the last piece on to the house. Luckily we were able to pull it the opposite way in the nick of time.

Fast forward a few weeks. Renter upstairs gets evicted for not paying rent. Salvation Army comes along to pick up her washer and dryer on moving day. The washer was never turned on at all. They “turned off” the water, and caused the pipe to break. Apparently it was weak. Several hundred gallons of water later pouring into the kitchen and hallway we manage to get it turned off.

This is residual water leaking FROM all the lights. And yes, there is asbestos in that! The kitchen has been dried out, but all the counters are gone, all the flooring is gone and the walls are ripped away to bare studs.

In the meantime, renter upstairs is not able to leave. So we have no place to live for several days. Enter my mother, who volunteers to let us borrow her motor home. We park it in the front yard near where the new sewer pipe was laid. The passenger side corner is just about touching the stump of that tree. We live in it for about two weeks until the renter is able to move away. Then we move upstairs, but leave the motor home where it was (out of the way.)

I come home in the morning a couple of days ago to this sight.

My first thought was “Oh, flat tire. OK, not a problem I can fix that.” A better LOOK at the flat tire reveals that it’s IN THE FREAKING GROUND up to the hub. That was a bigger problem, especially after I shined a light down to see what was up with it. Second thought was “Oh crap, sinkhole due to a water break from the pipes!” as the hole was about six feet deep from what I could see. Tow Truck was called. City of Beaverton was called, specifically the guy in charge of this water pipe project. He in turn called Dunn Construction and we all sat around and waited for the tow truck guys to get the motor home out of the hole, which they did in about twenty minutes.

We find:

The old Septic tank. Six feet deep and four feet across. It seems when this house was built it was outside of the city limits. In fact the city limits were at the center of the road in FRONT of the house. So the septic tank was put on the property near by. I was led to believe that the septic tank was some where in the backyard. But it seems that it was never actually filled in. About a foot and a half of dirt covered the top, which was rusted through. What’s really funny about this is that Dunn Construction had been running all kinds of nice heavy equipment right across the top of this area for several days with no problem at all, but I guess the weight of the motor home on it for almost a month is what did it in.

But an hour later, a couple loads of gravel, the loan of one of Dunn’s BIG tractors to pact it down.

Problem solved!