Stopcock

Today's the day . . . . . . . . . . to turn the water off

This may not look like anything very interesting or significant to you - but I can assure you, it's going to make a big difference to us here.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a bit of an emergency, in that an outside tap sheered off - and the mains water to which it was connected, gushed forth as an unstoppable fountain.  Fortunately, it was an outside tap and so not actually in the house - but it was just outside the back door and the outside drain was hard-pushed to cope with the volume of water that was spewing out.  To make matters worse, this was happening quite late on a freezing cold and dark Sunday evening in February.

The problem was there was no way to stop the flow of water other than at the original, ancient stopcock that was a couple of feet down at the entrance to the drive.  It required a special stopcock rod to turn it - and we didn't have one.  To cut a long story short, we were once more indebted to John - our good neighbour across the road.  He didn't have a rod either, but he came up with an ingenious way to solve the problem.  I know it involved using a 5p piece inside a brass nut - but how he managed to attach it, I know not?!  But he did and that's how things have been ever since - until today.

Will eventually managed to find a stopcock key from another neighbour and our plumber came to fit a stopcock, upstream of a new tap.  So we can rest assured now, that all is well - and our water supply is under control .......................!