Leak in the Driveway

I'm not sure exactly why I walked outside, specifically over to where my wife parks her car, but I did.  To provide most of you with a frame of reference, she parks on a  paved slab, that has two brick steps that lead up to a little porch, about 2 steps from where she stands when she gets out of the car.  One step up, there is a small pool of water and little bubbles coming up...there is also a trail of water from where the pool spilled over the step and spread out into the driveway.  All in all, I figure the leak was probably new, though I didn't know how much water was flowing and where from.

For a little background, this is my second leak since I moved into my house, about 1.5 years ago.  The first one involved a spigot in the farthest corner of my .75 acres.  The spigot popped off and was free flowing.  My gardener found it and we quickly plugged it, though it left a huge pool of water.  That begged the question how long the thing was running like that.  Well, my next water bill answered that question. $600 more than normal worth of water : ( However, the water district game me a one time reduction of almost $300, but still.

My second bought with a leaking pipe brought back the bad taste from my first.  I called a buddy, got some mallets and chisels and began hacking up the bricks, I'll the while hoping the leaky pipe was actually under the bricks and wouldn't require me to break up the slab driveway.  After about 2 feet of digging, after removing 8 or 9 bricks, I found what could best be described as a pin prick size geyser coming out of the 1 inch pvc coupling.  Leak found.

Like any home fix-it project, it's never as easy as it seems.  We detached the old pvc, (1 side threaded male 3/4 to female pvc 1 inch connector, 1 inch tube, 45 degree elbow and more pvc) and took it to the hardware store to buy the equivalent.  The short of it is what we bought fit almost...and by almost I mean not at all.  By now the main water has been off in the house for 3 hours and 1 of the 2 flushes we had left was already gone. Instead of trying to get other fittings, pulling lines, possibly break slab, etc, we decided to go for a quick fix for the day so we could do it 'right' at a later date.  So, back to the hardware store to buy a flexible copper tube (like the ones used on water heaters).

We bent and pulled, prodded and prayed and the damn thing still didn't fit.  Back to the hardware store.  Instead of copper, we returned with a braided steel line that was longer and more flexible (we made it loop from point a to b), flushed the supply line and had water.  That got us through the night, so we could get the new fittings and do it the right way tomorrow...tomorrow is actually today.

I'm wondering, with everything working with our temporary fix, how long i'm going to have a big hole in my steps before I go back and fix it the right way?  Any guesses?