When Todd Spencer’s sputtering water pressure hit critical mass, the Oak Park homeowner called a family meeting. He could shell out a minimum of $8,000 to contract a professional to dig up his landscaped front yard and replace a main pipe, or with sweat equity, do it himself at one fourth of the cost.
The do-it-yourself option would potentially shave off about $6,000 from the proposed bid, and probably settle in at around the $2,000 mark, including materials and labor.
The catch: He wouldn’t be able to do it alone.
“The basic plan here was to put a wider copper pipe with unrestricted water flow into the house. In this community either you have skills like that, acquire skills like that, or have a lot of money,” says Spencer, a software engineer. “Given the circumstances that I’m recently unemployed, and in job transition, and with my kids needing jobs this summer, I knew that this project was something we could do as a family.”
As he made that pitch to his three teenage sons, they swung back replying, “you have got to be kidding me, Dad,” says Spencer. “And I’m still thinking that.”
Spencer himself grew up on a horse ranch in California, picking up his skill set from his handy father in those years. He wanted to push that tradition forward.
His wife, Helen Schmucker, a fashion designer and avid gardener, acknowledges that digging up their front yard wasn’t something either of them really wanted to do, and they knew it was bigger than a two-person job. It would require a 10-person crew, the five family members, and a few neighbors and friends.
“This project has attracted a number of willing participants, boys in their early teens, who all wanted to jump in and get involved,” Spencer says. “We have actually had to turn some kids down.”
When it became clear they had to do something, Spencer initially replaced the horizontal pipes, hoping it would mitigate their water pressure issues. When that didn’t work, he started digging inside the basement, down through the concrete to uncover the water supply line. He found that theirs is one of a few homes that have an iron pipe, rather than lead, running from the house to the street, and it was severely corroded.
“Having three strong boys who are willing to work and help out, knowing that at the end we would all have better water pressure for the house, it was an easy decision. And hey, they are getting paid. That’s a good enough incentive for them,” quips Schmucker, the mother of Stephen, 18, Adam, 16, and Patrick, 14.
Blood, sweat and cheers
For 10 days this summer, four to six hours per day, the Spencers, a neighbor, Ben Kroeschell, and a few others, carved through three layers of glaciated dirt and clay to dig out a 5-foot deep, 60-foot long trench in the front yard of their 90-year-old Dutch Colonial on the 800 block of N. Elmwood Avenue.
“When we began digging the trench this was a beautiful lawn, one of the prettiest we have had in 20 years,” says Schmucker. “One of our biggest concerns was that we had heard so many horror stories from friends and neighbors who have had contractors come in and do the work with a back hoe. Literally, the water pipe is lying on top of the sewer line. It takes nothing to break through both of those and have a huge mess on your hands. That was one of the things we wanted to avoid.”
Curious onlookers might wonder if this project is a bit extreme for a homeowner. But Spencer says that there has been a real Zen quality to the experience, and for him, digging a ditch has been cathartic.
“The money we have saved is secondary to what we have gotten out of this,” he says. “In jobs that take weeks at a time, you learn things from your Dad, you get closer as a family, and in the end it is always worth the experience. I find that somewhat rare these days, to be able to have that happen.”
Doing it themselves
Steven Touloumis, chief building inspector for the Village of Oak Park, notes that a homeowner can obtain a permit to do their own work on their own home, but few people choose to take on projects of this magnitude.
“In the six years that I’ve been in the Oak Park water department, I believe Todd is the first homeowner here who is replacing his water line in this way,” says Brian Jack, superintendent of the VOP Water Department. “If there are more homeowners out there who want to put the time and effort into it, yeah, it’s a great thing to do.”
Now with the end in sight, Schmucker says her family’s ditch digging adventure has been their summer triathlon. Her sons Patrick and Stephen concur, interjecting that digging ditches is very hard work.
“Other than the fantastic weight loss capabilities, and the muscle growth just from lifting a shovel every day for four hours a day, this has been quite an experience,” says Stephen. “It’s good to be able to branch out and do things that other people don’t normally do, like dig a ditch.”
Once the project is complete, Stephen, a recent OPRF High School graduate who will be attending DePaul University this fall, added that he’s going to take a nap. “A two-month nap. That is my goal.”