BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND TWITTER BACKGROUNDS

Monday, November 30, 2009

Silver Lining My Eye!


The water main broke just outside of my house last week. I got home from work to find a gaping hole in my yard where the water had pushed it's way up through the yard and the remains of a bush that had gotten in the way. My wife ran to a neighbor's house and got them to shut off the main valve, but I already could imagine how much water had already ran through that pipe before it was shut off.

Now, my first reaction is usually me throwing my hands in the air and screaming, very dramatically, "Why me?" But, I've been working on that. So, despite my stress I did my very best to just let the situation flow. My wife is so very good at it, honestly, she is, people should pay her to give them classes. She says it's because she has a bad memory that everything just flows past her, but I think she just has everything in the correct perspective.

Anyway, so first thing was first. Assess the damage. I dug a hole, following the hole the water had created. After about an hour, maybe two I found the pipe. I guess at this point calling it a pipe is using the word loosely. At this point the "pipe" was more an example of rust collection. The neighbor (a Non-member by-the-way) that rushed over to shut the water off when my wife needed him told me that he could patch it, but, by the way it looked I would be lucky if it didn't just break in a couple of days someplace else. So we started calling plumbers and excavators to get bids. Thankfully the kids were in school still and we have a limited supply of bottled water in our food storage. Bids ranged from $1,500 to $2,400. I really wasn't surprised, I went with the guy that gave us the bid for $1,500, more because he used words like "That's my cost" and "I won't make a dime on labor" and so forth. He was the local ward member the people in the ward went to for things like this so I did the same. My neighbor came over a little later and asked how it was going and what the bids were. When I told him, he said that I was being taken for a ride, and that he could recommend a guy that could do it for $700, and he did.

The new guy isn't even in the yellow pages but as promised he gave me a bid of $700 and I took it. The next day he showed up as promised and began his work. Along the way he discovered that some of the pipe had already been replaced with copper and that he thought that we should just replace the bad pipe. He also discovered the old septic tank and an old sess pit, but he said that we could just continue to ignore those. Suffice it to say at the end of the day we only paid $500 for the whole job. I was very pleased.

Now for the moral of the story. First, I am a pessimist, I still don't like the idea that at the end of the day we had to pay $500. But, it certainly was a lot better then what the other guys told me and I would bet that any of the others would have had me pull out or fill the old septic tank and sess pit. This simple excavator was straight forward and didn't want to have me pay any more than I wanted to, no pressure, no fluff, just get the water back on. It's times like this that makes it hard to even see the black cloud past the silver lining.

Oh yeah, just because the guy is in your ward doesn't mean he's giving you the best price. He is first and foremost a business man.

0 comments: