Town water break -"oh we hooked it!" 😬

right so also december 16th i'm just coming to a stop here um there's been a water line break in town and uh typically we always help fix that i guess you could say so brian's just checking the oil he's just giving it a quick look over and i think he's just going to give her a fire and we're going to walk at the town walking it means you're just going to drive it and this thing uh this thing's top speed is about how fast you can walk that's why the guys always say they walk in them they're walking them come on there it goes okay we're gonna let this puppy warm up all right guys so we just drove over here brian's walking his track over this we're actually in town so priority number one is to always mark before you dig so we've got the guys out to mark for the energy gas lines right here or the yellow and you can see it's painted gas line goes all the way along that way and it's painted again right there it goes this way then the next is power you don't want to be hitting gas lines or power lines so they're marked so we will have a few lines but they're over here there's some more power more power and then two power lines go this way uh this pool of water is where the water's been pooling um it looks like it's coming right out of the driveway so i know you probably have some questions like mike what the heck is a water break how does it happen well that water line is eight feet underneath the ground because that's our frost level if it is not eight feet under it will freeze but in saying that water water breaks can happen for many reasons um it could just it could have come unhooked um there'd probably be a fitting under there i bet you if we start digging there'll be a fitting under there from the water line in town probably drives or drives probably in this ditch and then it would tee into this house so right there there's going to be a fitting most likely that's where it's leaking it can break from frost heaving under the ground um it could just get fatigued and so on so forth so anyway we're waiting on brian and he's gonna come and start digging up uh these people's driveway and um we're gonna find this thing all right different angle you can see where it's coming out right here see it now typically when you have a water line break the water goes straight up or typically you'll find the path of least resistance but it normally will work itself straight up eventually so we'll dig straight down right here eight feet is the plan here let's go find brian just hot back in the truck here he's got to be around somewhere oh there he is right there look at that speed you guys breaking he's breaking records so uh typically walking uh high hoes uh or trackhoes or whatever the heck you want to call them it's typically hard under cracks which is why it's not done right now why didn't you go get a trailer because it's all right he's here first first scoop remember we have frost we got to work with right but that water would actually thawed that frost out so it's frosty there but not there hence the water so normally we have a different bucket for this this is too big of a bucket for frost but our other bucket is uh at the farm so anyway long story short we can't get the other bucket right now so this one's just gonna have to do the other bucket has teeth on it not a finishing blade big difference so oh yeah that's a good scoop oh yeah that's heavy eh you're like mike why are you dumping it on the road because uh there's only about 20 people here in town and they can take the other road there's only two mike are you saying that uh you guys dig up water lines and whatever might need to be done in your town you betcha we do and we've been doing it since i could walk not even joking been doing it since i could walk brian actually has his own construction business uh i can't remember what he calls it something excavating but anyway uh yeah so he has all his tickets and everything that he needs to uh do any digging [Music] so he knows all the protocols dealing with uh doing any type of digging in southwest saskatchewan in the winter is super challenging yeah we want the water to be on that way we can help find the water leak so once we get closer to the line typically sometimes you'll uh you'll feather it you know you kind of know where the line is so you don't rip the line right in half and you can fix it to be honest uh we don't normally do that too much anymore we just rip the line out and we just we got all new line and we'll just back dig it back a little bit to take a whole new line on unless also we just happen to get lucky and then we're right there oh man we got an apple cross going on here there it goes [Music] sometimes i'm always curious what kind of treasures i can find i think i got questions i figured you would how many water lines have you and your uh brother dug up oh gosh so many lines like water and and laid lines like we've done lots of trenching laid water lines of all different sizes and shapes and uh we've done power lines you name it we've done it in fact we've done it so that water lines have actually gone right between the energy and power and then that's where it gets fun so then you park the big machine get the little machine the mini and uh you do scoop and then you shovel and you scoop and you shovel you scoop and you shovel because you can't cut any of those lines water line we don't care about we can replace the water line right frankly yeah we give a crap out of water line it's almost a pain in the butt just trying to find it but yeah you cut a gas or power things are going to get awfully sketchy off the quick even for mike we're off we're going to go get his smaller bucket for that track but we think it's deeper inside the guy's yard so we don't want to want to make any bigger hole than we actually have to didn't you need a boost brian look his back was going yeah the chevy you gotta yeah you gotta stick it down in there there's just a little wii and then the ground is right here there you go so we're going to use the backhoe not the hole but the loader part to uh go grab his uh 48 inch digging bucket it'll penetrate the frost a lot quicker and easier not as much as not as good as this 24-inch bucket with teeth but let's be honest 24 inches like we want to actually get done today oh yeah i don't mess around what the heck you got going on with your breather here we don't worry about that where do i here yeah oh yeah i didn't even need any we keep it plugged in so his buckets are four and one so he can clamp it that's okay let's go get his loader his bucket i mean i guess before we do i guess we better let it warm up eh better let it warm up alright he's warmed up so uh that one there is the mini excavators little john deere mini excavator um that's typically what we use for water lines and such but uh we're gonna use the big boy this time mike do you ever use your backhoe like the back like the whole part of it ah no once you have either a mini excavator or a high hole you'll never use that thing again so but we had tobacco first so now we just use it for odd jobs mostly we just use it for loader work because it has the industrial loader on it so it can take more of a beating than these uh um tractor loaders can so yeah go just gonna clamp that bucket oh yeah come on get it over there yeah there it is yep oh clamp it perfect now we're gonna run that into town there he comes all right let's get this thing changed say what i think it's gonna be further that way and a nice little pool of water down here yeah so we're gonna dig we think it's actually coming that is a trench that goes into the house so uh the main line is here and then teed but we actually think it's leaking farther up yeah so we're gonna keep digging a little bit it's not our first rodeo probably won't be our last i lost my mirror oh how'd you do that on the vibration drive there goes like that and he's gonna swing in here he's gonna grab the other one once he gets it to the right angle that he's looking for [Music] just like that and then that wedge which you can't see because he's moving it away there see this wedge was down here that's how he opens it as soon as he pushes the wedge up here by hydraulic it locks it in he's good to go we're good to go try not to take my head off i got my hard hat on whoa there it is all right let's start thinking i can feel the ground moving over here actually cold water yeah and you know guys we're only dealing with like two feet of frost if this was in january february we could be dealing with a whole heck of a lot more than that and it's actually not that pleasant actually i'm just going to squeak through here derpy derpy derp therapy derp see it's wet under there under that trench that's the reason why that dirt is soft because it was once dug and of course there's a pool of water running in from over there so typically you want to do this two stage you want to do one deeper part for all the water to run to and then once you have your uh find your line uh yeah wherever your line is you definitely want a deeper part for all the water to run to so that way you don't have to work with water you see and then we actually have pallets to throw under there as well we've got some roots tree roots [Music] talking about dirt um typically we have really heavy clay uh all the way down you can dig out in the field i'm just watching for him here as well you can dig out anywhere and it's concrete basically all the way down so you don't have to worry about too much but uh when you're working with mud sand it's not that there's really any sand here but just mud or or if the ground has been dug up before if the ground has not been dug before like virgin ground it's concrete it's really hard all the way down but if it's been dug once before uh that definitely increases the risk factor because it just wants to fall in it's very loose it takes a lot of years to repack that ground again [Music] people have unfortunately died due to getting down into a hole and then the walls caving in on them so you got to be really careful about that you can actually get cages they have to have these cages they'll set a cage in and then you can work inside the cage we do not have such cage nor are we are we too worried about it we've done many holes we just be out the holes make a lot bigger holes than what you need and uh never dig by yourself quickly the operator never goes in the hole typically the operator of the hole or whatever it might be never goes in the hole normally there's other people that go down there in case they get themselves into a bad situation what we haven't lost more than two people no i'm just joking we haven't lost anybody thank goodness this gotta be a pretty slow lake you guys typically there would be water visible water coming out of the ground visible remember there is a line that goes back there which we don't want to hit oh wait no no alarm i thought it was coming out right there [Music] once we can scrape it dry and keep the water from running in over there then we can try and look to see where it's coming from right there i can see it see that right there it's coming around right there brian it's coming up from right there see it i was right the first time when i thought i saw something that's what we're luck to see right there [Music] so we're going to try to keep skimming keep skimming wait to see if we can find any new stuff i don't see any new stuff yet the water's running yeah i know but it was right there it's coming i can see it it's actually squirting it's squirting you gotta be close see that okay i'll get a shovel there's a bucket this could be a really easy fix oh [Music] all right we're going down hold on here guys yep we're good i'm in the bucket [Music] right there right there oh i think there's a foot i think we could go down deeper just trying to get a sense of how deep this is oh my god i got to hold this i got sticky stuff yeah you got a lot of mud take another out i would take another foot off of it trim another foot off of it here if we could do it without hooking the line that'd be awesome but if we do we do [Music] we're gonna take some more yet keep taking it we're going down again feel like uh i can go i can go all the way with it that's what i'm trying to do okay all right oh boy successful he's going to take a little bit more off he's going to widen this uh hole out a little bit across it's causing a little bit of issues you can get great big frost picks which is like a gigantic one big ice pick we don't have it for this we do have it for the mini [Music] or smaller bucket but also uh helpful [Music] this is just welcome to front cross has proven to be a challenge [Music] trying to just chisel it away at it because you can't pull it it's all or not [Music] so [Music] worried about here is uh we think the line is on the t or the break is on the t and uh the t means the line that goes uh north and south and then it teed into his house if that be the case that complicates things because uh if you hook it you're gonna hook the main line i was thinking it was just gonna be on the one goal of the house no big deal but then we have a tendency then we could have the risk sorry of breaking two lines and nobody wants that we're gonna scrape this water you can see where it's coming out there [Music] so far so good mike have you ever hit main lines water lines oh yeah oh yeah pretty much every time the only what the only time you get down there and just shovel shovel shovel like a banshee is if it's power or gas but shoveling mud is a lot of work easy i heard something right there i can get down there and start troubling again you can get hydrovac trucks actually to come down here with height with water and pressure and then oh oh we got it oh we hooked it i thought i heard something yeah we gotta go tell randy to set the water off

Channel: Mike Mitchell

Views: 142,836

Rating: 4.9241142 out of 5

Keywords: Mike Mitchell, Saskatchewan, Water break, Waterline break, Case CX240, Trackhoe, Brian, Fixing water break, Digging hole in road, 2020, We hooked it, Opps

Id: cw0C3IcAno0

Length: 23min 28sec (1408 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020