Weinermobile and A Water Leak

Tuesday: (04/10) The rain was back today. I drove the Jeep down to the smog shop. It didn't seem to want to pass it's self diagnostics so I left it at the shop for them to do whatever it took. I walked on to downtown Mountain View and met Lou. We had pork bun breakfasts at the Hong Kong Bakery.


On the way home we stopped at Costco for some things and noticed one of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobiles in front of Walmart's. A couple of years ago we saw in up in redwood country on Highway One above Eureka. evidently there ar a bunch of these classic vehicles running around all over the US. Kind of a nice job traveling all over in a cool car.

Baked beans, potato salad and ham for lunch. Shortly after lunch the shop called and said the Jeep was ready. I was quite surprised expecting just an estimate of the huge cost of fixing all sorts of things to get it passed. When we were at Costco my ATM card wouldn't work. It's brand new and stamped to be good through 2015 but reported it was expired. I just got it last week. On the way home I stopped at the bank and were eventually able to get it working. When I got home water was flowing to the top of the curb on both sides of the street. First I thought we had just had a lot of rain but then realized it must be more. I walked down to the corner and found water sprouting up all over the street like geysers. Obviously the water main had a problem. The city was called and arrived about an hour later. Then a crew started to assemble an hour later. They drilled a bunch of holes in the pavement to try to find where the water was coming from. The hole where the water shot the highest should have been closer to the break. That almost worked. It got them within 25 feet of the break which they chased down with the backhoe. By about 1030 the leak was repaired but they still had the trench to put together enough so the street can be reopened. Beef Wellington with French fries and corn for dinner. 


I notice a while lot of brown water in the gutter on both sides of our street. More than any rain storm we've had recently and rain water isn't muddy as it passes by, so I check it out.


I found lots of little geysers near the corner od El Camino Real.


The crews came out after a while since it was about 3:30 and they get off work at 4:00. They drilled holes in the street to try to locate the source. The highest spout should indicate it's close to the source.


The highest spout was only about 10 feet way so they dug up quite a bit of pavement before they found the problem which was about a 3 inch hole in the side of a 6 inch pipe. Of course there were a couple of electrical conduits just above the failure in the water pipe. Kind of suspicious so likely the failure was caused by damage during the electrical conduit installation.