Gets on a 43, humming unconsciously

[peterbirks]

Well, I think that I can conclude with absolute certainty that the source of the leak in the bathroom is the hot-water pipe leading to the taps in the sink and the bath. Which is, of course, a pain. And I still ca't work out why running a bath on Saturday morning should cause no dripping whatsoever into the hallway downstairs, while running a bath on Sunday afternoon should result in an imitation of the Victoria Falls on a rainy day.

Still, we must take positives where we can. I now know that it takes 15 kitchen bowls of hot water to generate a bath of a reasonable depth.

And it wasn't all that cold this morning. And it wasn't raining, and it wasn't windy. When the highlight of your previous week was a train trip to Penge, you can take joy from the spectre of orange on the urban horizon as you walk to work. Tiny pleasures when living for the moment.

I'll try to get some Greatest Hits done this week, ready for posting by Friday week or thereabouts. A lot will depend on when I can get the plumber to come round (if I can get him to come round) and whether he can fix the leak. It's amazing how inured we come to modern conveniences. I guess that having to carry those bowls of hot water up a flight of stairs to the bath added a mere five minutes to my morning, but it felt like something out of the 19th century.

Then again, I do seem to have problems that no-one else suffers from. Or, if I am not unique, people are keeping the solutions very secretive. Collapsing ceilings, unusable bathrooms. I'm just waiting for the front of the house to start falling away. How all you bastards live in perfect homes that don't cause this kind of grief?

Comments

The smug bastards fight back

[geoffchall.livejournal.com]

I think you way over-rate the qualities of other people's plumbing. I think the thing is that you have a capacity to write about it in a way that doesn't put everyone else to sleep. As long-discussed, the subject matter is almost secondary to the writing - I bet I could read Ian McEwan's shopping lists and be fascinated.

So it is with plumbing. Rich gits that we are, we have a bathroom, an en suite shower room and a downstairs loo. All 3 toilets have at some stage malfunctioned. The shower has leaked on 2 or 3 occasions and the bath has leaked into the kitchen below twice. The central heating is imperfect and we got our money's worth out of British Gas many times over. Even now, I have to redecorate the loo downstairs to cover over the last set of leaks, staining the ceiling.

But it's all just so dull. And so many better things like 52 Returns still to do.

Re: The smug bastards fight back

[jellymillion.livejournal.com]

When we return home post-extension we shall have two en-suite bathrooms and a "normal" one for the kids to share, plus a new indoors downstairs "cloakroom" (why do we still euphemise this? Or is it OK because most downstairs toilets have a coathook or two?)

One upstairs toilet had a slow drippy leak (still has, come to think of it) while the other had a valve-not-clising problem that has produced a rear-view water feature for several months. We didn't fix it initially because we were only a few weeks from beginning the building work that would terminate it highly prejudiciously. That was four months ago. But its days are numbered now.

And then there were the blocked drains, the dripping pipe under the sink and a couple of other tediousnesses. To hell with University, I want at least one of the kids to do City & Guilds plumbing.

Mike

Depends on the house

[(Anonymous)]

Yours is probably older than ours, which was in quite good condition when we moved into it.

We had a slight earth movement once that broke some floor tiles in the hall; we´ve replaced some bits and pieces; and when we got central heating installed it wasn´t done very well; but we don´t seem to have had your kind of problems so far.

-- Jonathan

Re: Depends on the house

[peterbirks.livejournal.com]

Well, it looks like Challinger is ahead in the "number of water-related mishaps" stakes, although Woodhouse clearly has the potential for mega-disasters that few of us could ever hope to equal.

I think that these mishaps should be publicized more -- for a start it might make some people less keen on "period" properties. Oh, whoops, that's what I live in, isn't it? Perhaps not.

Earth movement causing cracks in tiles and wallpaper is an ongoing process -- the house has definitely moved by between half an inch and an inch since I moved in. However, from my experience (an admittedly small statistical sample) new houses were also vulnerable to earth-shifting and the ensuing cracks could be considerably more firghtening.

But I'm looking forward to the Woodhouse tales of woe -- possibly a prequel to the somewhat larger building jobs that I may be getting undertaken myself over the next decade. The path of rebuilding never runs smooth.

PJ

Re: Depends on the house

[geoffchall.livejournal.com]

I can just imagine how exciting Mike could make tales of domestic DIY. It might just encourage me to get on with my own work in this line.