Then There Was One. Or Two

November 16, 2012

...Then There Was One. Or Two.

I was able to cross a couple items having to do with utilities (loosely defined) off the to-do list yesterday and only have one of those left. Completed, now, are water and electricity (the most important), television and Internet (the most fun), and, added yesterday, gas and sewage. The only one left is garbage pickup, which has to wait until I get proof of ownership from the county, which could take forever given San Bernadino's bankruptcy.

A couple days ago I worked up the courage to call the plumbers my realtor recommended. I have to admit, plumbers scare me. Not only are they able to do something I've never been good at and usually my efforts at make worse, not better, but the cost of their services often comes in at a frightening, sickening number. More than once my hopes, life, and plans have been washed away by having to fork over tens of thousands of dollars to guys with wrenches, shovels, and rooters.

And here I was, the proud owner of my first septic tank, having to ask a professional to search my property and find the damn thing and let me know what kind of shape it was in. I'd been putting this off, afraid of what the answers would be, but when the guy came to install the satellite dish for my Internet, the first thing he asked while he drove through my gate was where the septic tank was.

I shrugged my shoulders, gave a sheepish look, and told him I had no idea, but I thought back to earlier visits to homes like mine out here and the kind of troubles that people driving over plumbing and plumbing-related features can cause. One of the things talked about quite about on the Internet sites I looked at to learn a little about septic systems is how poorly they respond to people driving or parking cars on them.

Since I had hopes once, and maybe still do, of putting up shed(s), a place to keep my Jeep, a patio, walls, floors, and other construction fantasies, it was kinda important to know where not to build. Also, I have to admit I was curious.

So, I called the plumber and left a message when the “out of office” recording suggested I could. Half a day later, I called again, and the guy who answered didn't sound all that helpful and gave no sign of having received my message. He assumed only someone who bought a foreclosed property wouldn't know such a thing but said he'd have someone call me.

Then, they didn't.

The next day, day two, sometime in the morning my cell got a call that I didn't answer, but I called right back. The guy who answered my call was difficult to communicate with, and I ended up deciding he wasn't the guy who was supposed to call. So, that afternoon I called the plumber again and learned the locater guy who was supposed to call me had been sick but was expected to return later that day and he'd call me then to arrange the appointment.

To his credit, he did, and would show up the next day (yesterday) between ten and noon and would be more than happy to locate the tank for $150 cash.

To keep up my end of the deal, Minardi and I piled into the Jeep about eight-thirty and headed the ten miles into town to get the money. We drove back, I drove past my house by mistake, and ended up at the post office, which I knew to be a mile or so past my place.

As I pulled into the parking lot to turn around, I saw the sign that claimed that not only does Landers boast ten thousand residents, but that it's known as the land of unlimited vistas or something like that.

I also learned that Minardi can, in fact, jump out of the Jeep's window should he want to do that.

I slammed on the brakes by the time he hit the ground and only later did I figure out that while I'd secured his snappy green harness to the seat belt, I don't think I'd fastened the seat belt, not that I'm convinced that would have made any difference.

He was absolutely fine and was cowering on the ground when I'd made it out of the Jeep and around to his side, but it was hard to say who was more frightened.

A little after we got back home, Rob showed up in exactly the sort of truck I'd imagined a septic pumper would look like. He was as tall as I am, which is the kind of thing I notice, and was easy to get along with and not at all concerned about Minardi running around. As it turned out, he has eight dogs (!) of his own, and doesn't care much for people who don't like them.

I tried to be helpful and pointed out the two pipes coming out of the ground that I'd found, which he pretty much wiggled and ignored, and also the cleanout, that stub of a pipe that plumbers use to stick rooters in to clean out clogged systems.

He was more interested in that and soon had the rubber cap removed and was sticking something down it. I was more interested in the pipe that the cap had covered, whose top was rusted, uneven, and looked to be rusting away, but he paid that no mind.

He let me know that the cleanout ended up in a V, one side leading directly to the house that it was right next to and the other toward points to the northeast.

That was the more interesting trail for me and, seemingly, him, too.

The trouble there being that there was only a few feet of property before the fence surrounding my house shows up and to get to it you have to exit the gate and walk all the way around.

Which we did.

He wiggled a magnetometer over the ground, and I made a weak joke about using a divining rod. He told me he'd used them, too, and assured me they work, and I just kept quiet but couldn't help internally wincing at his faith in magic.

He found a likely place and using a half-inch metal pipe that attaches to a hose, began poking holes in the ground. I was stunned by how easily he was able to stick the pipe in the ground: it was just like putting a knitting needle into a cup of yogurt. When he made his first poke into the area he'd marked with his shoe, he hit something metal just under the surface and I complimented him, saying something like “You're great!”

A minute or so later, when further pokes failed to turn up anything, he joked that I might want to think about taking that remark back.

He moved a few feet away, about a meter or so due east, and his magnetometer started squealing again. As much as I hoped what it was locating were lumps of gold the size of my fist, his face remained stoic and serious. He poked at the next promising spot and, again, struck metal.

I could hear the “clink” as the metal rod struck something below the surface, and so could he. This time, however, he was able to repeat the results as he kept poking around that first place and spent the next few minutes discovering its outlines.

I was thinking he might be poking too hard and might punch right through the damned thing, but he soon stopped and began talking to me over the fence.

And, it was all good news.

Despite his earlier warning that this might end up being (another) of those old steel tanks that were falling apart, he proclaimed it in good condition. It turns out that when checking other ones, he literally had poked through them, and that's one of the ways he used to figure out if they were any good or not. The septic tank, he explained, has two chambers and there's an access port on each. The one more frequently used (?), the one that collects the liquid from its initial deposit in the one that hold the solid waste, felt like it had a plastic cap, which is newer and evidence of more recent maintenance.

Also, he asked me to pass over a couple of the paving stones that came with the place and placed them on top of the access points.

I'd been thinking of marking off the area for my own, so this was quickly done. One at a time I passed them over the fence, which we both appreciated.

Then, done, he spent half an hour or so talking first about septic systems and then about Landers, where he'd grown up. I learned about trails, where are good places for hikes with dogs, how he rolled his truck when he was a teen on an old runway and ended up losing his car but gaining a wife, and how the area had changed (and his thoughts on what caused that).

Then, he only charged me half as much, which shocked me. Plumbers don't do that! They charge you ten times what you expect to pay!

He took off and, now that I knew where the tank was and that it was safely out of the way, I made my next call to the people who fill the propane tank that sits just to the north of the house.

I had to fill out some paperwork to become a client before they'd do anything, so Minardi and I got back in the Jeep and drove back to town. The tank, since I'd arrived, had a gauge on it that had been sitting at zero, so I'd figured either the tank was empty or the gauge was broken. From what I'd assumed, the only thing the gas was being used for was to fuel the water heater but made arrangements for them to bring 100 gallons of liquid propane out today.

I'm expecting they will, but to make sure they'll be able to get close enough, I need to move a whole pile of boxes that are sitting on tables, the heavy boxes that are full of books.

I'm not looking forward to that, but am looking forward to the future. The next step(s) will be:

• Move the boxes over by the other boxes, just outside the west window
• Try to stand that shed on its back up on its bottom
• Failing that, run to Home Depot and buy a little shed

Then, onto the more recently discovered problem … how to get a working computer.