A Little Bit Of Plumbing

Today, our granddaughter Victoria came over to give us a hand with some of the jobs that we are doing.  Our bathroom was partly plumbed by a very incompetent plumber, who we fired; I am now completing the work myself.  Albeit somewhat slowly, since when I bend down, I almost invariably trap a nerve in my back which puts me out of action for several hours or longer.  I had actually started organising myself to continue with some more of the plumbing work, before Victoria arrived.  The intention was that she was going to help Mrs GOG outside, but the weather was not particularly good and I suggested that she might like to help me.  We took an age to find the various pipes and fittings that we would need and she helped me to bring them to the house, so although I had a fair bit of plumbing to start to do I decided to leave the main part for the present and to teach Victoria how to put together some simple solder jointed copper pipework.  The plumber that we had got rid of had put a vent pipe onto the top of the hot water outlet from the cylinder, which I had never found necessary and had fitted a screwdriver operated valve on the top of this, without any capping.  As a result of this the valve had got knocked on a couple of occasions and water had flowed from the value onto the bathroom floor.  I though it would be a good idea for Victoria, as a first job, to solder an end cap onto a short piece of copper pipe, fit this with an O-ring and gland nut, before screwing it onto the empty screw-thread of the valve left by the plumber.  She did an excellent job, the neatness of her work, above the valve can be readily compared with the messiness left by the plumber on the joints below the valve.  I said I would take a picture of it and send it to her, which I have done and I decided to blip this picture; her first bit of plumbing and very good too.  Just to show how badly the work had been done by the plumber, as she gently tightened the upper gland nut, the whole assembly including the lower gland nut rotated, causing that joint to leak, so she had to correct the plumbers poor work, by tightening the lower gland nut sufficiently.