Adventures with plumbing (to be continued)

Adventures with plumbing

1) Kitchen floor all awash, like a lake, when JN padded down in still-dark on Tuesday morning. Anguished yells! Panic! Water dripping from the ceiling light -- though not causing it to short out. Must be coming from the bathroom above, though no leaking visible there. Central heating pipes running between the joists seemed an alarmingly probably suspect. So I call the number pinned on kitchen notice board for a friendly local plumber, who is immediately on his way, while JN sets bucket to catch the dripping and mops up the lake from the lino. Dave the plumber's first step is to drain off the central heating. Then checking upstairs, he finds in the bathroom that its a little silvery hose that runs between toilet cistern and bowl has sprung a leak, with the water soaking down through the rubber-backed carpet until, presumably, it followed the electricity wiring down through the ceiling below.

Dave has replacement little silvery hose in his van, and in a trice the leak is fixed. Two days later, though, we still have the bathroom carpet peeled back and draped over a couple of wastepaper bins so the floorboards and the carpet itself can dry out. They've lost all their sopping wet spots, but still definitely damp. We also have two of Dave's spanners, which he left behind, to be collected...

However: he told us that the pressure release valve (PRV) tucked behind the back our central heating boiler was not installed properly -- it doesn't release the water (or steam if it were running) in a swift 'pffft' as it should but (the note he left us says) 'water escapes from between PRV and expansion pipe'. So we ought to get that fixed. British Gas disclaims responsibility for incorrect installation beyond the 1-year guarantee period -- and will charge either just under £100 + £22 month 'homecare' package or a one-off £200 for doing the repair. The former only saves money if you call them out about 3 times a year. So next step: check with Worcester, the manufacturer, and see what they say, though installation error doesn't come down to them... get back to Dave for his rate for the job...

Meanwhile...

2) Bathroom extractor fan went kaput. Again. It was installed last year, and is still under 3 year guarantee. The firm that initially recommended it and installed it now says the wonderfully elegant spaceship-round (Ikon) has proved so unreliable that they aren't doing them any more. We bought a model that boasted a humidstat control, set off by moisture level, which rapidly broke down. Okay, I said after the third call-out to replace it, we can manage on just the pull-cord and timer. We got it set up to operate independent of the light circuit -- so the fan wouldn't start up every time the light was switched on, and could be run without switching on the light. And it ran okay for just over a year, then something blew. First call, Jim the electrician was sent out with a normal square ugly replacement extractor fan -- which would need a new and different shaped hole bored through our newly insulated bathroom wall, and which did not have a pull-cord control but could only be set up to run off the light switch. So he took it away, and the firm promised to replace with a new Ikon, with pull-cord and timer but no humidistat, with new 3-year guarantee. But when he unpacked it from its box here yesterday, they'd sent a model without the pull-cord and timer module.

What we have now is at least a sort-of working set-up: with the old timer+pullcord module re-installed and connected up to the light circuit, the fan will only go when the light switch is on, when it starts vaguely spinning. Then the pull-cord sets it going properly until the timer cuts out (and it goes back to vaguely spinning), or switching off the light instantly switches it off. But at least we can de-steam the bathroom without having to open the window to the winter air and traumatise my windowsill maidenhair ferns and orchid.