Adam DallianceOh fuck, my flat is flooding.
Pipe from mains to bath is leaking like mad. Stock-cock entirely ceased up.
The estate emergency number reckons maybe 4 hours.
Oh.
I am full of cramp and horror but I have succeeded in turning off the flow of new water. I can barely type, my fingers are so sore.
But at least it's not getting any wetter.
Now I have no water in my taps and my bathroom is soaked and I'm soaked and aching and sweaty and face a massive repair bill.
Hope you like cider or rum coz there's no water in the house now other than the puddles on the floor.
I've known where my stop-cock is since I moved in.
I've known it's very inaccessible since the kitchen was redesigned.
I've known it's basically ceased up and that might become a problem for a couple of years.
Hammering on the plumbers wrench, wrapped through a tiny hole onto the stop-tap, while lying on my back inside a kitchen cupboard, frankly risked simply breaking the tap and making the entire problem even worse.
I did at least oil it first. Not with WD40 though. With olive oil. Had no wd40.
One of the jobs this plumber will hopefully do is move that stop-cock to somewhere accessible with a tap that isn't 50 years old and dying. And maybe fit a dishwasher? Never had a dishwasher.
Assuming moving a stop-cock is even possible? I hear they can do things like freeze the pipe before the tap on purpose and then operate on the pipe before unfreezing it?
Anyway. New bathroom incoming.
Maybe a wetroom instead? Surely a shower instead of a bath so small I couldn't really fit in it even if I liked having baths.
Maybe wheelchair accessible bathroom? My dad isn't likely to visit but I suspect everyone who lives long enough needs one eventually.
What else is good for bathrooms?
The cupboard that used to hold the boiler or hot water tank or whatever it was that was in there with the old heating system, is mostly just annoying and taking up space and smelling moldy.
I wonder if it's walls are load-bearing?
Would be great to ditch that entirely and take back a quarter of the bathroom floorspace.
Anyone got a favourite type of tap or whatever?
Should I get a smart-toilet?
Who likes a bidet?
I doubt my dad will ever visit, but if you don't die before you need it you'll need a wheelchair accessible washroom one day.
So was thinking about that.
Mortgage is basically paid, I have no wonder lust really. So there is a good chance I will live here until I die.
A 40-year bathroom that will still work for an old disabled man in his 90s at the end of those 40 years is what I'm aiming for I guess?
Probably really I'd move out or die before it became actually necessary, but the disabled-access on the rest of the estate is well woke, and this is a ground floor flat. It is suitable for a wheelchair user other than the current bathroom I think.
Ohh... I just had a thought.
When I turn on the shower I turn on the hot-tap to max, wait for it to warm up, and then pull back the pressure until it goes throb-throb-throb. Then back up a tiny notch before maxing out the cold.
I never really understood where the throb-throb-throb sputtering comes from. I considered phoning into James O Brien's mystery hour to ask many times as I stood in that shower. But now I bet it's that flexy-cable that feeds the hot-tap, squeezing or bending or compressing or something.
Stress-stress-stressing every time I turn on the shower so that I can use the ritual I've designed to ensure it's the proper temperature before I step in.
Until it weakens enough to break, just as the rest of the UK infrastructure breaks as Starmer takes over to get the blame.
Thanks Starmer.
Right.
I'll stop doing that if it gets repaired.
Hey science nerds: How much is my dehumidifier actually helping if it's outlet just runs into the far end of the bath?
That trail of water does end up in the drain, but presumably it's an evaporation-path along the way.
I should buy a longer tube I guess.
josh buermannA cup of water at room temperature takes a week or two to evaporate, I think you'll be OK.
Do you share a water heater that you can't set the temp to the one you want to shower in?
@buermann The shower is a hot tap and a cold tap connected to a double-pipe.
There is no temperature settings.
You turn on the cold and hot tap in a ratio to your choosing.
The ritual developed because if when standing in the shower, you feel too hot and turn the temperature down, sometimes the hot pressure gives and and goes throb-throb-throb and then it's oh-fuck-stand-back as the shower does a pulse-weapon of hot and cold water at you.
So I turned the hot down to the minimum before stepping in, knowing I should only turn it up from there.
And every time since, rub rub rubbing my way to a worn pipe and a flooded bathroom.
I guess none of this will matter in a new modern professional bathroom that isn't gerry-rigged together from flexy-pipe.
Is there a bathroom wi-fi standard or anything I should know about?
My current mirror-cabinet-on-the-wall has been too low for 25 years. I have to couch to shave.
I pull out one of it's mirror-doors to rest on my shoulder so I can see behind my head to cut my hair. Envisioning disaster when I drop it every time.
Is there some better high tech-modern way to see behind my head which doesn't involve video-feed my bathroom to India on a camera?
This is my barber.
Death to all hair that can't either be shaved to a grade once a month or grown indefinitely.
The culprit. This is the little bit of infrastructure that failed and sprayed hot water all over the bathroom.
It goes go easier trying to detach it when you twist the spanner the right way. I can never figure out which way to turn even when I'm not trying to decide when upside down tangled between the bath and toilet.
Turns out there exists a pipe quite like this only smaller and that's the type I bought to replace it 🙄
Oh well. Take this one to a hardware shop tomorrow. I need something like this, only without a hole in the middle.
Right. Well. That sort of works now.
I've successfully replaced the hose, and showered. But the mix-taps work different and it was too hot or too cold with no goldilox zone.
Apparently the temperature control on the boiler has become non-functional at some point, presumably unrelated. That's booked for service in a couple of weeks anyway.
The bathroom is is held together with gaffer tape and plastic sheets but ought to work for a few weeks before I can have the whole room refitted.
Arranged three meetings to quote the work.
One that went okay, then a second one which I thought seemed to understand the problems a bit better. He pointed out that the ex-hot-water-tank-cupboard being dismantled would probably involve asbestos-containment hazmat-suited operations.
So minus-points on guy number one for not pointing that out. Unless it's in the quote I guess. I won't look at them till the weekend.
Third guy messed me around a bit with arranging times, then never showed up on the agreed one two hours ago.
While he was messing around (and I was frankly busy anyway) the two quotes from the others have arrived.
I will look at them at the weekend.
I'm likely to go with the more competent-seeming guy if the prices aren't wildly different, even though he probably won't actually do the work himself, or even supervise, and is probably just the company job-assessor/salesman.
Possibly the job-assessing is the most important part?
Makes a hell of a difference in my more digital trade. for sure.
He probably tells that story about how lots of people tile the shower in the wrong order to everyone. It's a good line.
I usually am looking for cheap coz I don't care much. But here I much prefer someone who understands the complexities of dealing with the freeholder, and that I'm not looking for a patch-up job, I'm looking to secure the thing for the next 40 years.