By Joe Reul, Maintenance Coordinator
Little known facts:
One of the most important aspects of a desirable and beautiful community is the lawns and roadways. These two things enhance the value of properties because eye appeal is buy appeal! Garden Patio Villas has been around for 40 years, the architect must have thought it would make the community more inviting and have a look of country living, they planted Live Oak and Black Olive trees within the landscaping. Today, these trees have grown and grown and the roots are actually coming up through the ground, traveling into villa property and breaking pipes under the ground that control our water and irrigation system. We have been dealing with this situation for many years.
In the effort to improve our lawns, our Association has replaced the pump, ran a new line to the deeper part of the canal to get a good flow of water, changed and repaired many sprinkler heads and pipes that have cracked underground, however, we are still suffering with unhealthy lawns. This has been a continual concern for the all of us. The latest nightmare is a leak we found in the main line against the wall on Lemon Tree.
Again, this has caused the system to be shut down and water once again is not getting to our lawns. This past Saturday, we had a man digging and cutting large roots for more than 5 hours to reach the main line which was cracked in half causing the ground to overflow with water every time the sprinklers went on. The danger of this is that the constant water leaking from the broken pipe causes the ground to become eroded which in turn will cause the asphalt to collapse. This is not only dangerous, but will result in thousands of dollars to repair. In knowing that, we had to immediately repair this pipe. Today, the job was completed and tomorrow the hole will be backfilled and sprinklers turned back on. Prayerfully, this will be the final answer to our immediate problem and our lawns, with proper watering and feeding, will be restored in due time.
Unfortunately, this will be an ongoing problem that Garden Patio Villas has to consider. With these trees continuing to grow and the roots continuing to travel, we will face many repairs in our future in all different areas of our community. We need to come up with a plan of attack and also allow money in our budget for this situation that we will face in years to come.
Although, we are not alone in this situation, many of the older communities are facing the same problems. We want our owners to be aware of what is going on and to know that the Association and Maintenance is making every effort to fix these problems. Our goal is for everyone to have healthy and beautiful lawns!