Roofing mostly done - Utility tie-in

The roofing is pretty much done - just need a turret vent and wind vane.  I am using a sub to do the tie-in from the house to the city sewer and water taps. 

The sewer was easy - just dug a trench from the schedule 40 PVC pipe that I put under the foundation footing back in March (a red stake marks the spot in the 3/17/00 photo entry).  The tap was exactly where the city said (they used a TV in the sewer main to locate the Tee for my tap).

However, the water tap was another story.  The city as-built diagrams showed the water tap to be 10 feet east of the sewer tap.  We spent a day and a half digging with a backhoe and came up empty.  We have to dig very careful, with a lot of shovel work, because the tap is live and breaking it would be just like breaking a water main.  It is very tedious work.  We were about to give up, cut up the newly paved street, and install a new tap into the water main.  This would be very expensive.

First we tried talking with a number of folks in the city utility department, and we found someone who thought that they remembered seeing the tap installed west of the sewer tap.  We tried digging 10' west of the sewer line.  We first hit sand which was very promising:

The city beds water taps in sand to help folks locate it.  Pat with Magnolia Excavating did a lot of hand digging and we found the tap.  It is just a small copper valve that we can connect to our lines.

A water meter pit is constructed to house the main shutoff and city meter.  A 3/4 inch copper line is pushed through my 2" schedule 40 PVC sleeve that I also placed under the foundation in March.

The sewer and water line trenches are backfilled, and we wet and vibrate compact the soil in 12" lifts to insure that there will be no future settlement.