Saturday, January 19, 2008

Seeing as I had a whinge about the plumbing situation in the previous blog entry, it's only fair I update the blog about said situation.

The plumber arrived on time this morning and was a rather jolly, friendly sort. Which was a relief, because sometimes it is a bit of a gamble with tradies. I mean, I've mentioned the creepy plumber before. Those are the situations where it is perfectly acceptable to make up a husband. Anyway.

After the plumber was nearly devoured by the spiders that live in the roofspace, he explained what one problem was and how it needed to be fixed. And the part should be in on Monday or Tuesday, so that's all that needs to be put in. The water heater itself doesn't need to be replaced immediately, so I was ecstatic about that.

But what was causing the water to leak out under the house! That was the next mystery.

Looking under the house, the plumber guy discovered that the water was actually leaking out of the copper piping under the house that leads up to the water system. In another fortunate moment, the hole in the pipe was on an exposed section of pipe and not in the wallspace like I'd feared. HURRAH! Well, as "HURRAH!" as you can be about that sort of thing. It's more a comparative "HURRAH!" in the way of, "It could have been so much worse, but it's not! Yay!"

So he fixed that in about 10 minutes or so. What had happened was that whoever had done the plumbing (a complete idiot, according to the plumber) had put a clamp over the pipe to hold it onto the beam, which you're not meant to do as it reacts with the copper and makes it decay. Thus the hole in the pipe and instant, unwelcome watering system. Just makes me hope whoever the idiot was hasn't done the same thing with the piping inside walls, etc... Ugh.

Although this whole situation has made me feel about as useful as the Pope's testicles (to steal a phrase from The Vicar of Dibley). I'm really not all that handy when it comes to practical things, although I do okay with painting, mowing, wood chopping, changing washers on taps, etc. But when it comes to matters like this, I just sort of apply the blank expression of minimal knowledge.

2 comments:

kris said...

that to hear that you are able to have water back in your house without it threatening to decay your walls:)

Della said...

I'm happy about it too! Yay! Although better than that is having hot water for showers, etc. Mmmmmm... Civilisation!