Plumbing Problems: we all have them, sometime or another

Those of you who are familiar with the Wolf Compound can skip right over this first paragraph and not miss much, so see ya in a bit.  My husband's grandfather left the acreage we live on to my husband back more than a couple few years ago.  I never met Big Daddy, but by all accounts, I'd've liked to.  He and Mama Jenny lived in a lil house which is no longer on the property, having been bought by a cousin of the pack and moved down the road a bit.  But the foundation still sits in the field, marking the middle to the road front property here.  To the west of that old place was the home where their daughter {my husband's mother} lived until a year or so ago, and further to the west of that, was at one point where her daughter {my husband's sister} lived, which then became the location for my husband's youngest daughter's family, and eventually my mother moved her trailer into that location.  To the east of what had been Big Daddy's is my husband's place, where he and his first wife raised their five children, none of whom live here currently, but all of whom have lived somewhere on the land at some point as adults, I think.  Well, perhaps not all of them.  To the east of the place we live in now, was where his oldest daughter and her family lived for fourteen years.  So when I say, "Wolf Compound", I'm only sort of joking, the rest of me is serious as can be, and with good reason.

Lemony Snicket's lakeside house, well not HIS house...

Now, Jerry's mother is 80 and she does not live here anymore; she finally got her wish and lives in a nursing home, and loves it.  So we decided to rent out her place.  We weren't too rushed to put anyone in there, when we wanted to take our time and find the right folks, someone who might be there for longer than a year, someone who might be good tenants and not cause lots of complications and grief, and so we took our time, since we had lots of other stuff going on too.  In February, a young woman expressed an interest and she fit all the criteria~~she gave off good people vibes, ya know?

In March she signed the lease with a move in date scheduled for sometime about now, the mid to end of June.  So skip with me ahead a few months til last week when my husband is out mowing the various yards.  Normally, this means he gets all sweaty and dusty and grassy and a lil grit thrown in too.  But this time, he showed up at the front door after a few hours of mowing, and he was just caked with mud; which is odd, cuz we've been having a bit of a dry spell, relatively speaking.

Well, it turns out that the western end of his mother's place was sorta mucky and swampy, which was odd, cuz the rest of the yard was not.  So he goes hunting for a leak, which we hadn't noticed because no one was living there for awhile and Jerry hadn't had a chance to mow in a couple few weeks.  He discovers at least one leak, but couldn't get to it.  He tried, hence the caked mud attire, to squirm under the house to get to the leaky pipe.  Couldn't do it.

after the not Lemony's Snicket's
lakeside house falls into the lake

So we called a plumber.  And another one.  Then two more.  And then yesterday, after the first four or five didn't show up either when they said or call back; we got in touch with someone who it turns out my husband knows but had forgotten because how often do we need a plumber?  More often than you might think.

This morning, said plumber comes by and we chat for a few moments; he graciously allowed me to gather my straying wits as I earlier described on FaceBook {you can read about it here}.  Then he went off to see what was what.  Half an hour later, he was back and the prognoses is not good.

The problem isn't the leak, per se; it's access to the pipe.  There isn't any access at the moment.  So we're going to have to cut an access area, thru the brick.  And then we're still not entirely sure that will be enough to grant access, because there isn't a lot of clearance between the house and the ground.  Oh, and the tongue that allowed the home to be towed and moved onto the property some seventeen years ago or so has been cut off and, I do think, shoved under the house.  Right about where the plumbing for the master bath and laundry is.  So we're not exactly sure what we'll find.

We'll take it as it comes, cuz it's gotta be done, and it's gotta be fixed.

{*sigh*}