Confederacy of a Dunce - Hulk Mad!! HULK SMASH!!

Friday, April 13, 2007

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Last night Mrs. Dunce and I came home about the same time, arms laden with all sorts of groceries in preparation for our house-warming party tomorrow. We had ambitious plans which included some preparation of snack foods, some last little bits of organizing and perhaps a teensy bit of cleaning. But we were both hot and tired after our respective shopping trips, and both really needed a big glass of ice water (not the same big glass, mind you. One each). I filled up the glasses and turned off the water. Or at least that was the plan, but instead I failed to recognize my own strength, as the tap handle snapped in my hand and water started gushing everywhere (fortunately, "everywhere" really just meant "pouring at maximum rate through the faucet into the sink).

Our previous plumbing adventures had somehow not been sufficient to inform us about the location of the main water shutoff valve in the flat (previous workmen had shut off the water outside, where it leaves the pipes and supplies both flats), so our first step was a panicked run around the house, feeling the various pipes for coldness/signs of flow. A likely suspect appeared in the toilet (separate from the bathroom, in that traditional sort of English style), but of course the handle was immovable (and I sure didn't want to break it. Water spraying into the sink is one thing, water spraying all over the toilet room [WC?] is quite another). I must admit I was in full-on panic mode as this was all happening. Some spritzes of (bike) oil and some (gentle) manipulations with a wrench, and the water was miraculously shut off. So the most urgent aspects of the emergency were thus eliminated. And after all, we did want to replace the taps on the kitchen sink (having two separate taps, one hot and one cold, both of them very stubby, seems quite useless for just about any kitchen purposes). But then the phone rang....

It was the downstairs neighbors, wondering about the water. Apparently our supply is also their supply. The cold tap in our kitchen sink is fed directly from that supply, with no way of turning it off except turning off the water completely. This returned the problem to "immediately urgent". Mrs. Dunce headed straight out to the building supply store to purchase a new set of taps (actually, two sets just in case one of them wouldn't fit for some reason), while I put on my plumber hat and went to work under the sink. In a jiffy, I had the taps removed and was waiting with a cup of tea for Mrs. Dunce to return. Or, more accurately, I spent a couple of hours awkwardly wedged under the sink with some assorted tools, first trying to figure out how everything was connected, which parts were meant to unscrew (and in which direction), and just how to remove those bloody taps. All the while knowing that our neighbors were also waterless until the problem was fixed (fortunately they were very understanding).

The new taps were indeed appropriate for the job, and I'd pretty much figured out how things went together. So with a flourish of the wrench, and quick as a jiffy I fastened them all back together (doing them both at the same time with one wrench in each hand). Or else I grunted and strained and muttered and fumed and sulked and sweated and so on, until they were finally connected right up. Wheeee, I thought. Time to turn the water back on. And I did, and it sprayed. Under the sink this time, where, errr, we didn't have the right sort of washers to go between the various fittings involved in the connections. So off with the water again, and a frantic rush on the bicycle to get to the home furnishings store for new washers before closing time.

Knowing me, you already know that the store was closed by the time I arrived (open till 9pm some evenings, 8pm others. This was an "other".), so it was a swift and disappointed bike ride back home with nothing to show for it. Sometime during this period Mrs. Dunce tried a couple of emergency plumbing services but with no success ("morning" was the best they could do). I was a little bit loopy by then and wasted a while tearing apart the old tap in the vain hope of finding a suitable washer there. Or maybe I could cut down a rubber washer from the old taps. Eventually I decided to replace the tattered old washers from the previous fittings, in the hope they'd be better than nothing.

And they were. Once I (re-re-re-)reassembled the taps and turned the water back on, the leak had slowed to a regular drip (about 1.5 drips/second most of the time). Good enough to place some pans and towels, clean up, and go to bed leaving the water on (one of the downstairs residents gets up before 6am, so the water needed to be on by then, although they generously offered to collect water in kettles for the morning if necessary). We got up many times in the night to check and/or empty the accumulated water (I should note that water leaks have already been a nighttime obsession for me, long before any of our plumbing problems started), but there were no real problems otherwise. well except that my back, shoulders, hands and forearms are ridiculously sore from my amateur plumbing efforts.

This morning things were relatively fine, though I had to hang around for the expert to arrive. He did fix the leaky problems in the pipes, but sadly an additional leak was revealed in the tap once the pipes and connections were repaired. Taps themselves are not covered under our service arrangements, so that remains unfixed at the moment. Fortunately the expert did us a real favor and installed a shutoff valve on the offending pipes, so that they can now be turned off without affecting the water elsewhere in our flat (or indeed, in the neighbors' flat). So we are currently dripless, but also without a working kitchen sink.

And it's only 24 hours to the housewarming party, with a mountain of things still to get done by then. What else could go wrong? It's not like it's Friday the 13th or something. Stop by and check out the carnage!

house

Friday, April 13, 2007 1:09:20 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)