| A Tale of Two Pipes 4/02
By Scott CoverdaleA woman named Carol called on a Thursday, a few weeks ago. She said that 4 1/2 years ago she had been diagnosed with cancer, so her loyal husband hit the road. She also lost her job. She had two surgeries and chemotherapy, and then, more recently, back surgery and, as a complication of that, she fell and shattered her arm and shoulder. She has three kids at home. She noticed that there was a growing puddle of water in her back yard, and that her water bills had quadrupled. Was there anything that we could do? I called Tim, and he stopped by later that afternoon. He said that the water was about eight inches deep next to the house, and that there was a lot of gas bubbling up though it. I talked with the woman again, and asked her if her kids would be capable of digging a trench. Her oldest, a student at Pima College, was tagged for the job. Over the weekend, he dug most of the trench. The next Monday, I went out to inspect the trench and make a materials list. On Tuesday, Tim, Maynard, Ryan and myself finished digging under the wall, through the wetlands, and to the respective meters. Then we laid new gas and water pipes, repaired two interior gas leaks, and called it a day. Carol was stunned. She hadn't had anything that friendly happen to her in a long time. The whole job cost approximately $525, including materials, overhead and labor. My guess is that a contractor would have charged about $2800 for the same work. If another agency were to be responsible, there would have been about 20% administration expenses on top of that, for a total of $3360. Why could we do it for so little? A) Volunteer workers who are motivated, have experience and work hard
B) Client participation (opening and backfilling the trench)
C) Low overhead (6% administration)
D) Donated equipment (trucks and pipe threader, hand tools) |
