Grrrr

Just an iPhone blip today. This is the underside of my boiler, I've been staring at it a bit this afternoon.

Water problems continue in Northern Ireland. This afternoon the water service 'lost' another reservoir servicing South Belfast, where I live, so the number of homes on restricted water supply jumped from about 30,000 to 60,000. Our water came back yesterday for a couple of hours in the afternoon (when I was out) but went off at 6pm again. It came on again at some stage this morning (I was out again) and is currently just a trickle. I doubt we'll have it for long*. The pressure in our boiler has dropped, but there isn't enough mains pressure to repressurise it, so we have no hot water and no heating. Tomorrow will be Day 4 for me, and I'd really quite like a shower!

For us this is just a bit of an inconvenience, but I really pity people with young children and the elderly, it must be awful for them. Some hospitals lost water for a few hours today too, they had enough supplies to cover it but it's a bit worrying!

The main frustration is the haphazard communication. NI Water is publishing a list of planned outages but lots of affected areas aren't on it, so it's difficult to know when we'll have water and when we won't. Even those on it are finding it's totally inaccurate anyway. Some areas seem to be completely under the water service's radar, with no information at all. And when the water is on, like ours today, it's useless.

I do have sympathy for the engineers working round the clock to fix the leaks though, when this all blows over I hope they get the credit they deserve.

Anyway, rant over. Cold, dry night in our flat tonight! :)



*update: in the time it took me to type this, the water has gone off again