For safety reasons, the gas company won't let anyone else cut the pipe that leads to their main, and the electric company won't let anyone else disconnect wires from their transformer. (There is no charge to disconnect the utilities.) But the water company just shuts off service in the street and takes their meter -- it is up to us to cut the water and sewer lines ourselves before demolition of the house. So, yesterday morning, Walter Jr. (Walter Heckel & Sons) brought his "machine."
Walter dug down until he found the water (copper) and sewer lines (PVC) then cut and capped them.
Walter also dug a test hole about ten feet down so we could see the soil quality both in the front (where the buried services are located) and back of the property. After we were done looking, he filled in the hole in backyard with the dirt he had taken out.
Walter was so experienced at running the excavator that he could put a hand shovel in the ground to mark a spot, use the machine's scoop to dig around the shovel then pick up the shovel with the machine's scoop, move it to another spot, put it back into the ground and then continue digging.
Oh, and... when we were busy donating things, we didn't give away everything (yet). The old owners had three fig trees. Two are going to family friends but one fig tree was relocated to mom's garden. It looks very dead but mom claims it will survive to next year and grow back. We also salvaged the bricks from the old patio. Some were used to create aisles in the garden but most have just been piled up for our future use.
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