Daily Home Renovation Tips

In Part 9 of our series on our garden makeover we had finished transplanting the Hostas, planing the Pyramidal Yews and the dozen Day Lily’s. The next morning we discovered a problem that we had never encountered before. I am sure professional landscapers see this all the time, but this was a first for us.

During the evening the 8 year old underground sprinkler system that came with the house came on.  A few days earlier we had the company who installed it way back when come over to ‘open’ the system for the season. We will write a separate pair of articles about what he discovered. For now, everything was set to go.

So, the first morning after our remodeled front garden had it’s first watering from the underground sprinkler system I noticed a lot of run off of the triple mix from the garden onto the driveway, an indication I thought of excessive water.  However, look at the picture more closely. Look just inside the garden bed at what would be the beginning of the trail of soil on the driveway.

Did you see it? No? What about in the picture below? 

When I saw that hole in the ground, here is what I thought happened. In preparing the main garden for it’s makeover I had removed some of the bushes , roots, trunk and all. So I thought that I had forgotten to pat down the dirt that I used to fill the hole left by the removal of the main roots and trunk and because of that the sprinkler had washed away that loose dirt.

So, what did I do? I got back out the shovel and moved some of the triple mix around to place some of it into the hole to fill it back up. I then stepped on that area and put a little more  of the triple mix on top of that.

There. That should do it.

Two days later the sprinkler system came on again per normal and when I looked outside, yep, there was that hole again.

I started to think about it and the only conclusion I could come up with was that there was a leak or break somewhere in the underground piping for the sprinkler system. But still, that did not make perfect sense to me. Why? Well, when the gentleman from the sprinkler company came over the prior week to open the system for the season he said he was the leader of the team that had installed it 8 years previous and that all of the lines carrying the water around the front garden was along the outside edge of the garage wall and along the garden side of the pour concrete border along the driveway.

So why was the hole, which I was now convinced was a water line leak, a full 2 feet from where we were told the sprinkler system lines? That didn’t make sense, especially with the hole so perfectly round.

Come back tomorrow to find out what we found out.

To continue with the next article in our series on our garden makeover, simply select this link to Part 11.