Emergency Blip

Our daughter came to collect granddaughter late morning and they disappeared of for a 'school friend reunion' - a group of six classmates who have remained firm friends into adulthood. On of them lives in New Zealand and is over on a flying visit so this triggered a get together.

After a quick lunch I set about the plumbing task I had planned the other day and was hoping to bring you a blip of shiny new taps installed on our cloakroom sink. The old taps have been in 20 years and the valves are knackered and spares that fit properly are impossible to find.

However as with all these things (especially in this jerry built house) plans went out the window almost straight away.

The sink appears to have been balanced on a pedestal and then plumbed in and as an afterthought someone stuck a couple of 1 inch screws through the fixing holes into the breeze block wall - so as soon as I removed the pedestal the whole thing came away from the wall..

I had decided to fit isolating valves as there were none - so had to try and do this whilst holding up the sink up balanced on the waste pipe ( it is full sized bathroom sink not just a little cloakroom basin).

Got the valves fitted and then of course because the sink had moved the tap connectors wouldn't mate up to the tap tails, so I decided to fit flexible connectors - but the only ones in my plumbing box were 22mm bath tap connectors which I bought when I changed the bath taps, but never used as everything fitted back fine! I think I thought that this sink job would go as smoothly.

With the pedestal back in place I managed to get the hot tap connected, but now can't reach the cold side. So that is turned off (fortunately the new isolator came in handy otherwise the house supply would have been off all night).

As I was packing up (a few hours later than expected) I realised I had no blip - so grabbed a shot of my basin wrench and the bath flexible connectors! Black and white just about summed up my mood!