Water, water...not in the basement, fortunately

My afternoon was interrupted at a quarter until four today by a phone call from our local water company, Golden Heart Utilities (GHU). The nice lady on the other end of the phone informed me that I needed to go to the house at 1612 Southern Avenue (the house we're currently remodeling) and check if we still had water service.

My reaction: "Huh!?" She went on to explain that a water supply line (the line going from the main to a house) had ruptured, and they had determined it was most likely ours, and they had dug up the street^* and shut off our valve. How did they know about the broken water main? Water running down the street.

At this point, I'm thinking one of two horror scenarios. 1) I had left the valve in our basement open, the lines had thawed, and our basement was "full to overflowing." That was worst case. 2) The line right next to our basement had ruptured, saturating the ground next to the basement which would cause expansion of the soil come winter, possibly compromising our basement wall. That was best case.

When I got there, it turned out to be nearly not so bad. Walking across our neighboor's lawn I noticed it was rather squishy (important!), and our entire driveway was dry. A couple of employees from GHU arrived a little while later, and we discusses what had happened. Since there was not enough flow through our water lines, even with the recirculating lines (due to non-occupancy and the freeze up last winter), our water supply froze up and ruptured. It finally thawed out (yes, I know it's July), and started leaking. The fun part? It started bubbling up in our neighbor's driveway, some 40 feet away. GHU started digging in front of our neighbor's, looking for the valve to turn off. When that didn't work, they dug up nearly 40 feet of street looking for our valve. Shutting it off stopped the "spring" in our neighbor's driveway. The guys told me they were out digging in the street until 2:00 AM this morning, and then came back later to continue digging before they finally found our valve.

So, where does that leave us? We need to dig up the supply line, find the leak (hopefully only one), repair it, re-foam (insulate) it, and rebury it. I'll be coordinating that over the next few days.

^*No joke. In our part of town, the main shutoff valves are buried about six feet under the street next to the water main. No exposed shutoff valves on the property line like we had in California.