Pipe-dreams

Hi there. plumbing fans!

Boy do I have a treat for you. A couple of pictures of some lovely, lovely pipework.

Plumbing, unless you do it regularly, is always a bit of a scary proposition. The potential for catastrophe is quite high, so whenever I set about any project involving a lot of copper tubing and soldering, I get pretty nervous.

At the centre of this project is a great big brass casting which will be hidden behind the bath and shower controls when the job is complete. All the pipe connections on this manifold are for 22mm tubing and as I've hardly ever worked with anything bigger than 15mm, this is rather exciting.

Anyway, after a couple of days of soldering, compression fittings and doubt, I reached the point where I had to turn on the water and see where the leaks were hiding.

Guess what...

No leaks!

So, just for a couple of days, I'm changing my name to Mr Smug.

Slow progress, but progress nonetheless

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned the bathroom reconstruction project, so I thought I'd let you know how it's going.

In short, it's going slowly

We started taking it to pieces on 30th April and by the time the plasterers arrived on 10th May, everything that was removable had gone; bath, wash-basin, toilet, airing cupboard, tiles, plaster, floor covering, lighting, the lot.

Here's how it looked at the various stages of dismantling

This is the point immediately prior to two days of plastering action, when we were completely bog-less. The only things that we didn't remove were the hot water tank and the central heating pump.

After the plastering, it looked like this.

Once the plastering was done, I refitted the old lavatory pan, which was a bit of a relief, then put back the old bathtub on temporary, flexible plumbing. Although this isn't awfully elegant and we have to use buckets of water to flush the toilet because there's no cistern, at least we can have a bath and go to lav without having to nip next door.

Everything seemed to be going pretty well.

Then one evening, as Blight-of-my-life was in the bath, she noticed a wet patch on the floor near the hot water tank.
"Have you spilt any water by the tank?"
"Err, I don't think so. Why?"
"I think it may be leaking"
I had a quick look. It was leaking.
"Arse!"

It was time to call in the experts. In this case, it was time to call Mr Barnett.
I explained the problem and asked if he could fit a new hot water tank for us. With everything else that would normally be in the bathroom gone, there'd probably never be another time when installing a tank would be so easy.
There was good news and bad news. He said he could do the job, but not until the following Monday. Not only would we have no bathroom, but we'd have no hot water for the best part of a week.

After a couple of days, there was some better news. Mr Barnett was able to do the job three days sooner than he'd expected, so after just four days of kettle washes in the kitchen sink, we had proper hot water again, and I could start building the airing cupboard wall.

And here's where we were a couple of days ago. The stud wall is up and waiting for the shower manifold and associated piping. The ceiling is painted, all the walls have been primed with PVA and a coat of emulsion and the bracing is in place for the new bath.

As you can see, we still have the old bath and flush-by-bucket lavvie.
It's funny how you get used to things.

You find out who your friends are when you've got no toilet

There aren't many scarier DIY jobs than removing a lavatory, especially if it's the only one in the house.
This is a task that I've had to do a couple of times, but this time, as we needed to clear the bathroom of everything that could be removed ready for the plasterers, we knew that there would be no opportunity to refit it for at least two days while they did their stuff.

Luckily for us, our neighbours were kind enough to offer us "unrestricted access to their facilities".
This was a considerable refief, so that's a big "Thank you" to them.

It could have been so much worse...

Plumb Crazy

This is just a quick update for those of you faithful followers who may have thought that I'd moved to Alpha Centauri. Alongside all the normal excuses for not posting; work, gigs, rehearsals and chronic laziness, I've been doing a bit of DIY.

A couple of weeks ago, we started renovating the bathroom. This is a project that we've been contemplating for several years, so I surprised myself by agreeing that we should get the job done this year. Before I knew what was happening, we'd bought a bathroom suite, ordered a load of new tiles and arranged to have the room re-plastered.

As our house only has one bathroom, comprising bath, washbasin and our only lavatory, the logistics of ripping out the old fittings, knocking all the old plaster and tiles off the walls, getting the walls and ceiling re-plastered, re-tiling and installing the new suite was never going to be plain sailing. If nothing else, we knew that we'd be facing at least two days with no operational toilet once the room was stripped clean for plastering, followed by a period with a jury rigged bath on flexible plumbing and a WC that is only flushable with buckets of water.

I probably would never have considered doing this type of job myself if I hadn't installed the old bathroom, nearly thirty years ago. After all, I'm older and wiser now and plumbing technology has moved on, so it should be dead easy now...

Here's how it looked before we started.  

to be continued...

Another five minute job. Yeah, right...

Thanks to the peculiarities of my shift rota, I had a day off work last Thursday and as the weather was so spring-like. I decided that I really couldn't get away with spending all day dossing in the house.
"I know what I'll do", I thought. "I'll have a look at the pressure washer and see if I can sort out that leak that Blight-of-my-life mentioned last week.

The pressure washer spends most of its time at the farm where it has a tough life cleaning up after the horses, so after a leisurely breakfast, I nipped up to the yard to fetch it. Once I'd got it back home, it soon became clear what the problem was. Where the hose pipe that supplies water to the machine is attached, there is a plastic threaded coupling that screws onto the metal inlet pipe. Over time, this plastic coupling has been repeatedly overtightened and the thread has partially stripped. Given the sort of damage that the poor thing had suffered, I wasn't too confident that it would refit securely, but I thought it was worth a try.
After only a short battle, I'd got it all back together and it seemed as if it might work.
I connected a hose pipe  from the garden tap to the repaired coupling and plugged the electrical power cable into a mains socket in the kitchen. I switched on the power, turned on the water and...
...nothing happened.

There was no water coming out of the garden tap.

Once I'd turned off the water at the rising main, it didn't take too long to determine what was wrong.
With the water supply safely cut off, I removed the tap and discovered a displaced rubber seal in the valve which prevents water from the garden hose siphoning back into the supply pipe. It must have been damaged during the ridiculously cold weather we had in December.
I decided that it would be easier to replace the tap, rather than to try and bodge the valve.

While I was picking up a replacement tap at Wickes I decided to also get a replacement for the leaky, in-line stop valve for the pipe that feeds the garden tap, as this may have contributed to the frost failure of the garden tap.

Plumbing:
I've never looked up the dictionary definition, but it won't be complete if it doesn't mention hours of frustration, swearing, seeping compression fittings, cursing, skinned knuckles and that insidious feeling that even though you've checked your work for leaks a dozen times, as soon as you turn your back it's going to explode and leave you ankle-deep in misery.

In the end, I think I only had to refit the new garden tap twice and in-line stop valve three times before I was happy that there weren't any leaks from any of the joints. Even so, by the time I'd finished, I'd used up all the available daylight, most of my patience and several dozen metres of PTFE tape.

Having fixed the garden tap, the only task that remained was to test the repair on the pressure washer.
So I plugged the pressure washer in and turned on the power, connected the hose pipe to the garden tap, turned on the tap and switched on the washer.
"It works!", I exclaimed, as water blasted out of the spray nozzle.
"Bollocks!", I cried, as the hose union fell off and water gushed all over my feet.

I guess that this is what artists call "a work in progress"...

Here's a good tip... Ow!!

"Oooh, I don't think you wanted to do that..."
If there's a statement of the (literally) bleeding obvious, that must be it.

Without dwelling on the full, gory details, yesterday I made a fundamental mistake while using a Stanley knife to cut a sheet of cardboard; I failed to ensure that the tip of my fore-finger was behind the steel ruler that I was using as a straight-edge for cutting.
It bled very convincingly and even now, twenty-four hours later, it still stings like an utter bastard.

I haven't done something quite so gormless for a long while, but I suppose that it's one of those things that has to happen every so often to remind us that if we don't take care, inanimate objects will bite. Learning how to use tools safely is something that can be achieved without actual injury, as successful chain-saw operatives will confirm, but there's really nothing like pain for ensuring the lesson is properly reinforced.

I sometimes wonder what it must be like for parents. Just how can they bear to watch their children learn that fire, broken glass and all those other everyday hazards cause blood, pain and tears when they are not treated with the respect that they deserve.
I can't remember my Dad ever preventing me from using any of the tools in his workshop, but he must have had nerves of steel to allow me to use the electric drill when I was less than ten years old. I guess he must have shown me how to use it safely, but I was never aware of "being taught"; I just watched him do stuff and then he would go away and leave me to it.
When Reallyfatbloke acquired his table saw a few months ago, I asked him when he was going to teach his kids how to use it, because the fascination of the spinning teeth of a circular saw has a hypnotic attraction to the enquiring mind.
He went a bit quiet

So, to return to my lapse of concentration.
Blight-of-my-life was surprisingly sympathetic,
"Oh, that's really painful isn't it."
Unfortunately, she then went and spoilt it by saying it was my own fault for messing about with model railway stuff. (Yes, that's what I was cutting cardboard for. The model railway layout is back on course... Oh do stop sniggering and making 'anorak' jokes.)

I wonder if she'd have been a bit less callous if I'd done it whilst cutting a mount for one of her photographs...

Phew!!

It's time to bring out the flags and dance in the streets; Yes, I've finished topping up the loft insulation. All the mucking about with building up joists and installing walkways to the various electrical fittings is over, and apart from removing a few bits of debris. . . IT'S FINISHED.

There's now a lovely fluffy sea of glass-fibre lagging, 270mm thick, completely covering the loft. Our house is now more well insulated than the top of Bruce Forsyth's head. 

Of course, now I'll have to start thinking about all the other stuff that needs doing. 

We had intended to refit the bathroom last year, but somehow that project got lost somewhere between replacing the front door and having a new central heating boiler installed. 

To be honest, not managing to re-do the bathroom was quite a relief. We spent ages trying to work out how to alter the layout to make better use of the space. 

Originally we'd hoped to fit in a separate shower, as well as a new bath. We faffed around with bits of squared paper and computer drawing packages for several days, trying to get everything to fit, but every plan we came up with always had something wrong with it. Radical ideas, like moving windows and/or the soil pipe outlet were considered, but even then we couldn't get everything shoe-horned in sensibly.

The final "New Improved Bathroom Plan" ended up looking suspiciously like the "Same Old Bathroom Plan". It was all a bit of a disappointment really.

Maybe this year we'll be miraculously inspired, and have one of those "Blimey, why didn't we see that before?" moments.

I'll let you know.

Superstitious? Not me! (touch wood)

Had a pretty good day yesterday, which may come as a surprise to anyone who lives in fear of "Friday the Thirteenth".  Such people would also be horrified to learn that I was booked in for my six-monthly check-up at the dentist.

Oddly enough, I quite enjoy going to the dentist. My parents were from the generation that hadn't fully grasped the concept of oral hygiene. My Dad had all of his teeth removed before he was fifty, and I have a dim recollection of going to a dental hospital in London with my Mum, when I was a toddler. She had to have her gums scraped to treat gingivitis. It sounds utterly barbaric. Luckily I wasn't allowed inside the treatment room, and spent the entire time, fascinated by the enormous 'metal-cage' style lifts, as they clanked their way up and down the building.

In spite of this apparent lack of care, my parents ensured that I went for regular dental checks, and by the end of my teens, I had accumulated a mouthful of mercury amalgam fillings and a couple of spaces where some wisdom teeth used to live. When I left home, my visits to the dentist got very sporadic. With all the moving about from place to place they sort of got lost, and there were a couple of five year gaps between check-ups. Eventually I wised up, and taking a deep breath nipped out from work one lunch-time, and walked into the nearest dental surgery.

It was a shambles. There was brick dust, wheelbarrows and bits of timber cluttering the reception area, and there were two cement- spattered builders, studying some structural detail in the ceiling.

I couldn't see any receptionist, so asked one of the builders when the place would be open for business.

"Oh, we should be finished this time next week."

"OK", I replied "I guess I can wait 'til then."

"Why, have you got a problem?"

"No... not really. I just need to register and have a check up"

"Oh. Well, that's alright. We can do that now. I'll get the appointment book"

"Errrr" I faltered, "No. I was, er... looking for a dentist..."

"We are dentists."

Strange, but true.

A couple of weeks later, I was seated in the big chair, and the guy that I'd last seen brandishing a pointing trowel was giving my teeth an MOT. 

Let's face it; after an introduction as absurd as that, I couldn't possibly have gone anywhere else, and in some subtle way, it has made the whole dentistry business less threatening.

I'm delighted to report that my teeth passed muster again, and to celebrate, I went for a wander around B&Q. 

The 200mm loft insulation is back in stock. (Wooo-Hooo!!) 

It's even cheaper than the last lot I used, so I immediately bought four triple-packs of the stuff.

(Buy now while stocks last, 'goodoldjac'. Reclaim the space previously filled with ice-skates and cardboard)   

When I got to the check-out there were three other blokes who had all clearly had the same idea, as you couldn't move for poorly loaded trolleys stacked with teetering rolls of rock-wool. I'd taken the precaution of buying some nylon rope to stop the whole lot rolling off my trolley, but my feeling of superiority was rudely punctured when I left the building, and started across the car-park. 

The car-park at B&Q is not flat, in fact it has a wicked gradient. I was just about half way back to The Tractor, when one of my rolls of rock-wool slipped out from under the rope. I lunged to stop it falling onto the tarmac, which set the trolley swivelling wildly, and the other three rolls tumbling off the other side.

It could have been worse. 

At least I didn't end up careering down the car park with the trolley, apparently in hot pursuit of four enormous swiss-rolls, as they ricocheted off the various parked cars and steam-rollered hapless shoppers.

 

But it was close.

 

Half a loft is better than no insulation at all

Had a bit of a setback on the loft insulation front today. Following abortive attempts to get some more rolls of the same type of 200mm thick rock wool from the 2 nearest branches of B&Q, I went to a third this afternoon, and discovered that the stuff I've been using had been on special offer and has now all gone. This is deeply annoying, as I'd just about finished all the fiddly stuff with joist risers and floor-boards for safely accessing all the wiring and plumbing and I'd finally figured out how much more insulation I needed to complete the job.

The day hasn't been a total washout though, as I listened to the final part of the radio adaptation of "A prayer for Owen Meany". This has been broadcast in 5 installments this week, in the 'Afternoon Play' spot on BBC Radio 4, and it has been excellent. I've never read any of John Irving's books, but I've seen the film of 'The Cider house rules' and thought it would be a worth a listen. After the first episode I was hooked to the extent that I even considered not listening to the rest of it, so that I could read the book without knowing the story.

I also managed to get to the mobile blood donation session at the Civic Centre and donate "very nearly an arm-full". There are so many reasons for people to be ineligible to give blood these days, that it seems really selfish not to do it if you can. 

The National Blood Service always needs gallons of the stuff, especially of the most common blood groups, so every drop is welcome. 

It doesn't hurt and you get tea and biscuits afterwards; what's not to like?

Apologies to xylophiles everywhere, but I've decided not to include any inflammatory images of power-tools today. Over-stimulation should be avoided whenever possible.