an in-convenience

There’s no way to make this blip look attractive.  It is what it is.

On Sunday morning, Anniemay jumped into the shower and immediately jumped back out again.  “The shower’s broken and I’m freezing…” 

This message is not conveyed in a lady-like fashion.  So I sense her discomfort straight away. 

It turns out that the shower isn’t broken.  I deduce this fact when she tries to wash her hair in the wash basin.  There’s no running water.  

I climb into the loft and discover that the cold water tank is empty.  230 litres of water have seemingly vanished, without us being aware of the fact.  Water is coming in, but the level is not rising.  So where’s it going?

Most plumbing jobs are beyond me these days and we have a breakdown contract with British Gas.  I call them and they send out a young man to sort it out.  By the time he arrives  (a good few hours later) the water tank has mysteriously filled itself. He can’t find anything obviously wrong and concludes that it must have been an airlock in the system.

I’m woken by Anniemay at about 2.00 this morning: “There’s water running in the loft”.  She’s right.  I can hear it.  “I’m worried we’re going to be drowned in our bed…”  (I made that last bit up - but she is more than a bit concerned.)  

I do the heroic thing and climb into the loft again (it’s nearly half-past 2 by now).  I can’t quite believe I’m doing this.  Water is rushing in - and seemingly rushing out again.  I come down stairs, wake up my computer and google ‘cold water tank continuously filling’.  

Apart from a couple of unhelpful posts along the lines of ‘you’ve obviously got a massive leak somewhere, you’re going to be drowned in your bed…’  someone suggests checking the toilet overflows.  I do this and eventually find that the downstairs loo is overflowing.  I turn off the isolation valve, and within minutes the tank in the loft is full and silent.

I call British Gas this morning and the young man is dispatched to replace the inner workings of the cistern.  He’s just been - took him 10 minutes.  I fitted this cistern myself a few years ago - it’s behind a panel and it’ll take me considerably longer than that to put it all back together.

Hopefully sorted now.  Although I guess I’ll have to wait until the early hours again to find out for sure.