Tried to save a dying oak in my client's yard and ended up killing their entire lawn instead

So I was doing a routine trim on this big red oak in a backyard near Tacoma last Thursday. Client mentioned it looked "sick" so I figured I'd root prune a few girdling roots to give it some air. Well, I must have nicked a main irrigation line buried like 2 inches down because by the time I finished, the whole yard was flooding. Lawn turned brown by Saturday. Guy was cool about it but now I gotta pay for a whole sprinkler repair and sod replacement.

2 comments

2 Comments

angela_harris1mo ago

That irrigation line was probably buried shadier than I've ever seen one (seriously, two inches is basically topsoil). Your client's a saint for being cool, most people would've lost it over both the oak and the dead lawn.

reed.elliot1mo ago

Respectfully, I gotta push back a little here. Yeah, the line was stupid shallow, but that oak root didn't exactly announce itself before it ripped through the pipe. Those big roots can be a real pain to dodge even when you're digging careful. Most homeowners would be screaming about tree damage too, not just the dead grass. Sounds like the client was just levelheaded enough to know that stuff happens with old trees.