Digging our own Trench

In honor of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings we decided to dig a trench in the front yard. Well, not really but it helps ease the pain. 

We are currently experiencing one of the joys of an older home with a sewer blockage. In this case right at the connection with the main. In the photo they haven't gotten that far yet because Denver hadn't issued the permit to dig up the street. And yes, we get to pay for that too. The initial dig was at the point where the first block was encountered, which was in the nice rocky area of the yard. That initial 15' trench revealed that from there to the house was clear but we were blocked at the street.

Why dig up the whole line if the block is at the main you ask? Well, while the original clay pipe was in pretty good shape but it had developed a sag and since it is clay its not a matter of if it collapses but when. Since we were already digging it made sense to replace the entire line. The "bonus", such as it is, is that there are now two clean out points in the yard rather than one clean out point in the crawl space. Hopefully they will be done today and we can start trying to regrow the grass.