Who knows what lies underground?

Its been a tough year on the irrigation pipes. The sewer line went for a complete replacement earlier and recently we discovered a small hole, a sinkhole if you will, in the area of the sewer line. At this point I figured it had to be the irrigation line and digging down took some time even in the soft earth. We found not one leak but two, one in each of the two parallel lines. 

This was caused by a root that had embraced the pipes and eventually crushed them. What fun! Once it was dug out and the root, mostly, removed the replacement was easy. The digging was a killer though.

Here is the part I was finally able to just remove.

For this part I basically chopped the top part of the root away, with a pickax, to expose both pipes. After that the rest was easy. If you look closely you can see three pipes at the top. One of those is a "dead" line that had previously been "embraced" by one of the Maple Tree's roots.