A chopper pilot once told me that Hueys in Vietnam had a part that was euphemistically called the “Jesus bolt.” Its function was to hold the rotors onto the main mast, which led to its nickname. If that bolt failed, only Jesus could save you.
My backyard has a Jesus bolt. I used to think it was a 1/3 horsepower submersible sump pump. Today, I found out otherwise.
I’ll explain.
My backyard is the low spot in the neighborhood – which means that, sooner or later, I get everyone’s rainwater.
The previous owner of my house installed the aforementioned sump in the yard’s low spot.
Let me back up – ‘installed’ is a pretty strong word. What they actually did is dig a pit for the pump, run five feet of PVC below ground until they reached their neighbor’s yard.
So far, so good.
Next, they ran twenty feet of PVC above ground, on their neighbor’s side of the fence.
With me?
Then, they attached flex hose and buried it along the back of their neighbor’s property until it came out at the corner of four lots that didn’t belong to them.
It gets better.
They then plugged said pump into a 100’ industrial strength extension cord, and buried it in the backyard.
How did it get power?
You’d think given their earlier decisions, they’d just plug it into an outside receptacle, but no, they ran it through a basement window (which could no longer be sealed against the weather) and plugged it into a wall outlet.
Nice.
All this I know now. Learning all this happened in stages – the last stage happening yesterday.
In the beginning – I knew only that there was a buried extension cord, and that the water went…somewhere.
Like most people not looking for trouble, we let this sleeping beast lie until it bit us. One particularly rainy day I noticed that not only was my backyard underwater, but there was a patch of water churning violently in the back corner of my yard.
Being me, I slogged over to the spot and found the aforementioned above-ground-on-the-neighbor’s property PVC pipe. It had split down the side and the sump was dutifully pumping water out of the middle of my backyard lake, only to deposit it into said lake about fifteen feet away.
This, I did not like.
So I bought some PVC, tore out all the splintered junk (that presumably had been shattered by repeated encounters with my neighbor’s lawnmower) and put a fresh batch of PVC on my side of the fence and tied it into the flex hose. Still didn’t know where that hose went to, but I didn’t want to mess with success. I found that the hose went deep into the ground, but once the water was going away – my curiosity followed.
Enter dad.
Dad was not the type to leave such a half-assed monstrosity in place. First chance he got, he dragged me out in the back yard to mount an electrical outlet right next to the pump. We buried conduit and gave the outlet some protection from the elements.
Then we dug a trench and buried the PVC and tied it into the flex hose. In the process, we discovered that it let out on the other side of my neighbor’s yard.
Early discussions with my neighbors indicated that this was not an issue.
Problem solved, right? Wrong.
Why? Because my backyard has a Jesus bolt.
A few days ago, my backyard turned into a lake again and I slogged through the water to trip a stuck float arm. Hours later, the water was gone.
Yesterday, the yard is a lake again. Waiting the usual span of hours, I see no movement. I slog through the marsh and pull up the pump, expecting to free a stuck float arm.
Only this time, the pump is well and truly broken. Apparently, the float fail last time occurred when the float was pressed up against the side of the pump. The pump got so hot that it melted a hole in the float. The hole let in water to the point where the float couldn’t live up to its name.
Last time, hauling up the pump probably cleared out the water and allowed trapped air to float the arm and trigger the pump.
This time, however the pump had kept running so long that it apparently cooked itself – leaving me with something about as useful as a soggy, twelve pound paperweight.
Off to the hardware store – and I buy the same make and model. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Hook it up, plug it in. Presto! Water level falling.
Later that night – I’m on the back porch watching my neighbors dig out their sump and 50’ flex hose. They’re headed for my yard.
That’s odd. So I chat them up and they’re intending to drain my backyard lake. This is nice, I tell them, but my pump is working now and this should all go away soon.
And then they kill off any hope of an easy solution to this mess.
See, the back of their yard is flooding, too. Not where it’s adjacent to my yard, but on the other side – where my sump’s flex hose ends. I turn off the breaker to the sump and, yep, the water in their backyard starts to recede.
My sump is flooding their yard. This has never happened before – but it’s for damn sure I can’t ask them to endure flooding on account of my lack of follow through.
They’re nice about it, even offer to let me use their flex hose, but I’m pissed. Here I fix the faulty pump, and it turns out I've spent all this time patching a system that is totally doomed. I’m stuck with either running PVC out to the street, or shelling out the three grand it would take to re-grade the backyard.
Right now, I’m praying for a dry spring.
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