Duct Tape Incident

Okay, it was my fault. Grimo wasn’t here so I couldn’t blame him. I had just lifted an empty wheelie bin back in place and whilst doing so bumped an ancient PVC pipe that gives us treated water to the hotel. It should have been buried but hadn’t been. It was one of those scenarios where ‘if it ain’t broke why fix it?’. These PVC pipes were laid decades ago and have become brittle.  Anyway, as I stood there being hit by a hard comb spray of rather pleasant warm water, I realised two things; first we had a serious problem and secondly I should move. I moved and streams of silver rods of water zeroed in on Grimo’s satellite dish which, on the angle that it’s set, gathered the water which then spilt out creating a very attractive waterfall that sparkled in the sunlight.

This was now a SOS situation (Save Our Satellite) as I’d previously had a run in with Grimo’s dish which was the cause of Grimo being without TV for…..well I don’t want to talk about or be reminded of it. Let’s just say that Grimo wasn’t at all happy with me – for a lengthy period of time.

As I carefully studied the source of the now turned into geyser type water spout and watched the split increasing I decided that an appropriate response was necessary.

Panic.

I have a PHD in panic so I wasn’t concerned that I wasn’t doing it properly.  I did two 360 degree turns as I scratched my soaking hair then clicked back into control mode. Turn the water off at the main. Fortunately the main tap was not frozen and turned to off quite easily. So the pub still had beer but no water. Back to the fractured pipe that was now just leaking water but without the pressure as all the water in the pipes drained out into what had now become a small lake around the pipe. Being a bush plumber from way back I immediately saw that I could solve the problem by cutting the split section out and with a couple of joiners and a new piece of pipe the crisis would be resolved. I went to the shed to get the fittings required which we always keep on hand. Right! This old pipe was 40mm and no joiners would fit.  What to do?

Panic.

But this time instead of doing pirouettes I did a few walking around in circles and on the last turn I spotted on the shelf the solution.

Duct tape.

By the time I got back the small lake had increased substantially. I had some digging to do. I dug a big hole beneath the pipe and the lake flowed back into the hole. I dug a ten metre long trench so that the lake would flow away from the hole. Our dirt out here – which you can bounce a crow bar off when it’s dry -soaks up water like a sponge so digging the trench from the lake was quite easy as the water flowed into it and softened the soil. It worked and I had the fractured pipe exposed with the water level beneath it. It was time for the duct tape solution.

I checked the gumboots for redbacks and bindis and slipped into them and found a container to sit on that was the right height but the diameter was slightly smaller than my rear end but, hey, this is all about overcoming a crisis and was not for comfort.

A good depth of mud had formed by the time I stepped in and carefully positioned my ‘seat’ and then lowered myself into working mode position. I started winding the duct tape around and around tight as possible till I got to the fracture then did a double roll around this area and then moved on till I was satisfied that I had fixed it. By the time I had finished this I discovered that when surrounded by soft mud, and with no hand holds, and feet enclosed in gum boots and the boots enclosed in mud – I couldn’t get up.

I attempted some gymnastic type moves which was based on theory and Olympic observations but this didn’t work in practice.  Just to my right was the shovel and just out of reach but …. if I tilted my seat slightly and stretched I could grab it and use it as a hoist/support/climb the handle type stuff  to get myself up and out and get the water turned back on.

I tilted, I stretched, and my ‘seat’ tilted with the extra weight dispersed to its side suddenly sank.  I gracefully followed and found myself deposited in the muddy slurry. The top side half of me remained in immaculate condition and as I lay there I felt the mud slurry filling my gum boots.

By the time I extracted myself what had been the clean side of me had blended into a match. Suction was my enemy as I struggled to extract myself from my gum boots that had a large proportion of sharp stones mixed in the slurry making it feel as if I was walking on a bed of nails. As it was painful standing I sat on the concrete path with the intention of just pulling them off.

Wrong.  I needed leverage.

The solution was obvious; lie on my back, wriggle closer to the nearby gate and use the top of the gate as a ‘hook’ for the heel of the boot and pull my leg out. It had occurred to me that with the boot considerably above head level there would be consequences.  The 60 odd degree angle meant that most of the heavy slurry used the leg to run down filling up the shorts of that leg; the lighter slurry disgorged itself over chest, neck and face but the foot was free. Read above extraction method for the same results on other leg.

It seemed a good idea not to get to the water main through the hotel so I took the outside route looking, I would imagine, that Newton’s theory on life emerging from the swamp was still in progress as I made  my way to the front of the hotel and turned on the water.  By the time I had squelched my way back to the duct tape operation I was feeling somewhat exhausted.

Various parts of the duct tape were bulging with consistent dripping. Back into the mud again and break out another roll of duct tape.  Outcome?  Success!  It’s holding and all the new poly pipe and fittings get delivered today. But no panic now – as long as the duct tape holds.