My DIY Hero!

My husband is not, and has no desire to be a handyman.  All the tools in the basement?  They're mine.  If he ever owned a hammer he lost it by the time he married me.  However, in times of crisis he steps up to the plate.  He's been known to weld a mean chainsaw the two times we had a tree fall down, and last summer he actually burned holes in his jeans when he was up on the roof on a sunny day fixing a gutter. But he would be the first to tell you, he's not much of one for DIY.

Which brings us to last weekend:  we had a leak in our water main.  We hadn't even realized it -- we just thought the water puddling up was from all the rain we've had. Our neighbor's the one who told us what was probably happening.  His first hint was the run-off heading toward his house (oops ... didn't notice that!). 

Another portion of the line burst a couple of years ago, and it cost over $2,000 to get it fixed.  We really didn't want to have to pay that to someone again, so my husband decided he would fix it himself this time.  I've got to say, I was skeptical, but it actually isn't that difficult of a fix (I can say that because I wasn't the one who dug a 4' deep hole!).  The hardest part was locating exactly where the leak was.  Once we found that it was fairly easy ... except for the fact that it was after 4:00 on a Saturday and no plumbing supply stores were open. We didn't find that out until after cutting out the bad part of the pipe! After driving to two Home Depots, an Ace Hardware, and a small neighborhood hardware store, all of which didn't carry the type of pvc pipe we needed, I figured I would be taking showers at the gym until Monday (hey, I might as well get some benefit from my membership since I can never seem to make it there to work-out!).  But Mr. Not-Handyman figured out a temporary fix so we had water in the house, and did the final repair once we got the right pipe on Monday. 

It worked! Of course Ibuprofen was his friend for the next couple of days, but he fixed it!  My hero!  If any of you want a tutorial on how to fix your water main, just let me know -- I had a good view watching him do all the work!