Yesterday, I did end up taking the day off. There was too much to watch. The pipeline construction crew that was working on our street last week had completed all the connections to the new water main and now had to make a connection at the opposite end of our street to abandon the old water line. It was quite interesting. The old water main on our street was a 4" line, the new main is 12". Wow, what a difference. Obviously thinking of the future. The new main, on this project only goes three blocks and dead ends at the connection that they worked on yesterday. The water lines are kind of a grid with valves on each end of each block to be able to route around problems. The new 12" main connected to the cross street 6" main and to the old 4" main on our street to continue down the street where they didn't replace the main. When discussing the project with a neighbor, he burst my bubble. I though it was rather wise of the city to install a bigger line since it cost about the same to install as a small line. The neighbor suggested a different reason. He thought the city might be planning higher density housing for the area. It is a block away from the university and 4 blocks away from the new city hall. His suggestion will probably turn out to be the real reason. We'll probably be taken over by the redevelopment agency. Enough negativity.
The water line project was still interesting. I sort of worked in construction for many years and am fascinated by how and why things are done. The crew working on this project seems unusually competent. They really work as a team, seemingly with little effort but getting the job done very quickly. No shovel leaners here. I was also interested in the fact that they were installing a cast iron water line but that they were installing short sections of PVC pipe at all the connections to the other mains to isolate the lines. Seems that now days there is a lot more electrolysis since the light rail line went in. They also may be looking ahead at when the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) goes in three blocks down our street. Though, the new line may be rusted out before that actually happens.
The end result of the morning was that the work crew did their job and the new water line was connected. And, that i enjoyed watching them, didn't do my job of moving more dirt and took the whole day off. I hope something interesting happens next week too.
Today, Lou took off work on her project and came down to San Jose with us. While I moved my dirt, she relaxed. When Dawn was through, we went by a nearby Mexican market for lunch. I had an excellent torta, Lou some soft shell tacos, and Dawn something like a quesadilla but with a different name. All very good. Then we moseyed home. When we got home, we could see we missed something. They had started digging out for the basement for the house being built across the street from us here in Palo Alto. Fortunately, they didn't finish yet, so, possibly something to watch tomorrow.
And now to address the hotter. It was much hotter today, into the mid 90's, which is very hot for here. The nice thing is,though, that it does still cool down in the evening. The weatherman says another day of mid 90's then down to mid 80's.
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