The joys of home ownership

Last night, Jason pointed out to me a puddle in the yard and asked me if I had seen it. I hadn't. So we got out a flashlight and started investigating. We found two large puddles on one side of the yard, one of which had bubbles coming up, meaning that it was an active leak. We tried to turn off the water to the house, that didn't work. Called out our water company, he says, sorry, it's past the meter, it's your problem. So we shut it off at the main for the night and decided to dig it out in the morning and find the problem ourselves. Of course neither of us slept well last night, I was so stressed out about how much it was going to cost to fix. So this morning, we start digging...and digging...and digging. Almost three hours later, we finally found in the pipe exactly where it was leaking. We had been expecting a seam or a joint to be leaking, but the pipe itself had a crack in it, like it had been under great pressure and just gave. Our house is only three years old. Pipes should at least last more than three years! So I called out the plumbers that installed the pipes to our house. Finally this afternoon, the plumber comes out. Tells us that they haven't had any problems with those pipes, so we're gonna have to pay for it. Since we did all the digging ourselves, it was less than $200 (apparently the majority of what you pay for when you have a problem like this is the digging out, according to my father-in-law). But still, that's nuts for a pipe that is only three years old. I'm so pissed that we bought a brand new house, still have a bunch of crap going wrong with it, and you get nowhere with warranties and stuff like that. Whatever happened to quality and taking pride in your work enough that if you see a problem that isn't caused by the homeowners, you fix it. I don't think we really think about and are grateful for things like running water until we have a problem with them. I can't tell you how great the shower felt this afternoon after such a long, exhausting day.