Roadwork

It's been a while, again. Here's a post I've been meaning to put together.

Back at the end of January, they started in on working on our street. The foreman for the project stopped by and told me what was going to happen.

They were putting in new natural gas lines for our street. They mapped out where they planned on cutting up the street, came back with a concrete saw and cut the outline, and then peeled up the concrete.

They started out great, taking care to cover the trench with steel plate, and even going so far as to weld the plates together!!! The next day, they came back and pulled up the plates, then put them back at the end of the day. They only did that two days.

Of course, they dug up our yard, too, to add in the pipe. The place where the gas line entered is about 10 feet below where the meter is, so they proposed moving the meter to the other side of the house, so it's only around 4 feet. It's not a big deal to me, so I let them go ahead and do it.

Here's where things got interesting. I believe it was early March when this happened. They had ran pipe across the front of the house to where the meter was, and had the supply pipe run to the other side of the house. On a Friday, they let us know the gas would be off for a while, while they connected everything.

They disconnected the meter, and it was late in the day and they hadn't re connected it. The pipe crossing over wasn't quite ready. I called the foreman, and he told me the gas company was going to put the meter back on where it was. They didn't. The technician said his work order was to install it to the new location, and that wasn't ready.

We got in touch, and the next morning they sent another tech out to put the meter back where it started. He then went to light the pilot light on the heater, and broke the control knob!!! Naturally, the week that followed was about the coldest weather of the year!!! It was Thursday before they got another tech out to replace it. Bonus, I've finally got a control with a thermostat connection. At that time, they also discovered that the valve at the water heater was leaking, so they had capped that line off until they could replace that valve. It made for an unpleasant week.

It was weeks after that before they came back and cemented the street back together as well as the four places they'd sawed the walkway by my house. The cement crew was slow and messy compared to the plumbing crew. One of the steel plates was sliding out of place down the street. One day while they were cementing the street across the street, they hadn't blocked off the street, and a couple of cars came down then had to back up the street, rolling through the wet cement.

And, when they wrapped up, the boy and I both went over and did a little vandalisim!!!

The boy did his character, CatNip, and I, once again, put the mark of the 512!!!