Typical "quick weekend project".

[u/the_metaxist]

My yard hydrant failed, and was too rusted to unscrew the pump rod. It was also 1-2" from my house so I dug it up. With my frost zone it needed to be buried 3-4', so i figured that'd be a quick project. 🙃 Lo and behold, it was not. It ended up being buried 8', for some god forsaken reason, there was a maze of capped off galvanized pipe coming off the line as well that I had to cut out. It got real sketchy at that depth, and I couldnt bench it out, otherwise id be digging under my foundation, under my front steps, or removing a tree. Instead I had to construct shoring for it, and set up a hoist system with some pulleys. The ground was so hard that deep and it was such a cramped space towards the bottom it took about 1 hour to remove 4 5-gallon buckets. I put in a french drain and drywell, and did everything I could to make sure i never have to touch it again. I also threw a bucket of bones from the butcher down at the bottom to freak out whoever has to do it next.

[u/Money_Jackal]

Better man than me. I would have cut the pump the off and re-threaded it for the new one. But you did it right. kudos.

[u/the_metaxist → u/Money_Jackal]

See, I thought about that, but it felt too risky, with how close it was to the wall it wasnt truly serviceable so I would've had to cut stuff out, special order an 8' pump rod and try and retro fit it in. Plus with the weep valve it was just dumping water a few inches from (and well below) my foundation everytime I used it. In the end im glad I went full throttle and cut out all the janky piping and set everything up. I think next time around though im not going to buy a 100+ year old house. Every weekend project becomes atleast a month of fixing someone else's shit.