bunn | Entries tagged with plumbing

1) the drain outside our house got blocked. I lifted the manhole cover, and found the shaft down to the drain was full of Horrible Awful Stinky Things that had risen to lap at the very edge of the cover (and had been leaking out if anyone had a bath in the house). I poked around with a spade, but was unable to dislodge anything.

But! we called a Drain Clearance man, who came within an hour, stuck a Device down the drain, twiddled it, and it was fixed! He did charge £180, but for that, we got someone who knew exactly how to do it, AND showed Pp where to buy a similar inexpensive Drain Twiddling Device, and how to twiddle it next time. Which makes it seem like that story about £5 to fix it, £175 to know *how*.

2) I took Theo to the beach, and he found a really, really manky runny dead seal and rolled in it. I brought him home and ran him under the outside hose. The Seal Smell remained. I used the usual dry dog shampoo. Still there.

I've just given him scrub scrub scrub, rinse, repeat with mint-scented dog shampoo under hot water in the shower. I can still smell it. Not sure if it's really still there or if I'm imagining it at this point.

I did not see the seal that swam past the house the other day because Theo had managed to find a place where he could scramble over the wall AGAIN. I have bought yet more wire fencing but have not yet had a chance to erect it. It's been a busy week what with one thing and another.

But I did see the egrets which came for a while on a recent high tide. Such elegant birds.

( Read more... )
The builders who were supposed to be arriving next week have cried off due to Covid-related supply problems. However, the Bathroom Guy is supposedly now over his bout of Covid and subsequent isolation, and in theory should be here next week. I am not holding my breath. Long ago in the optimistic Spring, we thought that the bathroom would be done and dusted by the time D&D rolled around at the end of Oct, but I now doubt the work will even be started. We have hired a little shower-bathroom thing that sits outside, which, the gods of the pandemic allowing, will arrive on Friday, because even if other roleplayers are happy to share one shower and two loos for a week, I have decided I am now old enough and grumpy enough to cry: NO! to that. Annoyingly, you can hire a shower that goes inside the house just in a room (if you have space), but not a toilet. Temporary toilets have to be Outdoors for Reasons of Hygiene. Which is ridiculous really because in the not-bathroom there is a currently ex-toilet (the Once and Future Toilet, one might say, since it will be one again) that is insulated from the mains sewer by the inadequate means of a plastic bag thrust roughly into its gaping maw, which I am pretty sure is also Forbidden but we have lived with that since May and nobody has died yet.

On a tangent, to my enormous if somewhat self-consciously ridiculous pride, I have made a construction of old floorboards and erected upon it a sink, in the room where the boiler lives. I plumbed in the cold water and the waste connection, but am currently stumped by the problem of how to turn off the hot water for long enough to plumb the hot tap in. I was hoping that Bathroom Guy would know how to do this, since presumably he will have to do it to plumb in the Bathroom Things. We shall see.

Yes, the boiler has died again! As usual, I am glad we have a gas fire and an electrically heated shower. I have sent an email to Artifice Plumbing, the nom de guerre of our current Boiler Man, and live in hope.

It's actually surprisingly warm for March, with primroses and daffodils everywhere, gardens full of flowering magnolias and camellias, the hedges full of flowering blackthorn and even the odd bluebell showing. Probably a good thing, considering the whole boiler thing.

Current Mood: chilly

now the waiting begins. Will he call back? Will he turn up? Will the repair require an Unattainable Part or cost £99999?

For future reference, the plumber I have phoned is DT Hunt, who examination of the faded business cards on the pinboard suggests we have phoned before. Sadly, I cannot remember him or whether he did a decent job, but I'm gambling that Past Us would not have kept the phone number if he'd been a complete whittle. I seem to have a plumbing tag in which I have recorded various leaks, but not actually useful information such as who did the fixing...

The kitchen tap began to drip, and I thought of the task that is 'Summon Plumber A Week Before Christmas' and quailed.

Instead, having done some online research I decreed that we would take the tap to pieces and attempt to identify the broken bit.

I turned off the water! I drained out the water! I looked carefully at the tap and worked out what tools to use! I learned which bits are the ceramic tap glands and removed one of them (Pp, encouraged by my success removed the other one). I sourced new ceramic tap glands of the correct size and model and ordered them, while Pp, still feeling encouraged, put the old tap parts back together temporarily! I turned the water back on, and the kitchen did not impersonate a fountain and leap on high!

The tap no longer drips. I can't decide if I am pleased or annoyed about this, but at least we have a non-dripping tap, a spare set of ceramic tap glands, and a feeling of having Achieved Something.

And he has fixed our dripping tap, after holding forth at length about how unlikely it is that he would be able to find a matching widget to replace the leaky one. Apparently tap manufacturers each make 40-odd near-identical Tap Widget Inserts, and our tap carried no ID. And yet, somehow, the million-and-oneth chance that slays the dragon - the Chosen Widget that he brought with him did actually fit!

... eta, it turns out on closer examination that he has put the taps back the wrong way round, so now you push them to make water happen, which is a bit odd. But at least they have stopped leaking!

In other news, when I went to the pet shop the other day, some builders brought in a blue dragonfly that they had found injured, and left it on the counter. The poor girl manning the till did not know what to do with it. That pet shop does not sell pets at all, only food and toys and beds - and anyway, dragonflies are not pets!

I offered to take it away and let it go beside a stream - I think probably it was dying anyway, but I thought probably it would find it less stressful to die in a quiet spot in the sun, and if it was stunned rather than permanently injured, a pet shop was not the place for it. So, we wrangled it into a box - it grabbed hold of Pet Shop Girl's finger, at one point, and we had some difficulty getting it to let go, which almost caused her to have a melt-down. But I told her 'Be Strong!' and she was.

So then we went to my car - me carrying my various purchases, and leading Rosie Roo, Pet Shop Girl behind me carrying the dragonfly in a box. But then we were interrupted by the dragon-fly-delivering builder, who demanded a status update on his dragonfly.

We told him our plan, and he said 'I could take it to a stream!'

So we handed the dragonfly box back to him, and disbanded our procession.

I went on holiday to the Spinward Marches, with

chainmailmaiden,

king_pellinor,

ladyofastolat and

pwibethran (trying, not entirely successfully, to escape his LJ username) under the somewhat capricious and diversionary supervision of

philmophlegm, while eating heroic quantities of cake, and drinking surprising amounts of... well everything really, including a bottle of Advocaat and a bottle of Amarula Cream (otherwise known as Elephant Juice).

We found a spaceship of strange design, cleared out the corpses, redecorated it and sorted out the dodgy plumbing. Then, once we had addressed the important issue of en-suite toilets,
( Read more... )

Minor pet upsets of the week :
( Read more... )

Current Mood: tired

We have had a bizarre leak in our house, which sent water trickling down both sides of the kitchen window & through the wall. It started last night, and we could not work out where it was coming from. First we thought it was rainwater coming in through the roof, then we thought it might be the loo, then the radiator, then the loo again: plumber was just about to start taking the floor up & knocking holes in the wall - when he finally worked out that it was being caused by a knackered old washer on the tap in the basin which had been standing innocently to one side pretending not to be involved.

"I feel like Columbo sometimes in this job' he told me, with enormous satisfaction.

Why do plumbers always SHOW you the knackered washer? Is one supposed to go round checking them every week or something? What are you supposed to say? (I always nod sagely but I have no idea if there is an expected response...)

Current Mood: curious

Yesterday I walked the dogs by moonlight. This evening I tried to do the same, but forgot moon would be later. Had to walk dogs by starlight - which wasn't as dark as you'd have thought. Az hared about like a loon. I'm pretty sure he couldn't see any more than I could, but presumably he could smell rabbits.

Today a washer went , and water came through the ceiling into the dining room and all over a sofa, which was a tad alarming. Philmophlegm resourcefully found a plumber, so at least the problem is sorted, but the ceiling is still full of water. We are not sure which of the ceiling lights have cables that go through that room, so am typing this by fire and candlelight, to the sound of dripping noises as the ceiling slowly drains.