Hot Under the Collar.
Today, due to a distinct need to fit something other then a kitchen, my uncle started to strip out and fit my new boiler and hot water system. Just once I’d like one thing – just the one to go smoothly! What actually happened was that we discovered was the upstairs water tank was leaking (which at least accounted for the dubious smell emanating from the airing cupboard) and there was enough crud in the pipes to fill in my pond…. Which is more impressive when you realise there is 10 tonnes of water in the pond. Apparently someone at some time had tried to flush the system but had only succeeded in pushing all the crap into the tank, which is a perfect place for it I’m sure. Still after a lot of cursing when it was discovered some moron had fitted the tank and then built the cupboard round it, my uncle scored first blood and removed the water tank…
Unfortunately this revealed what we previously thought was water damage that had bowed the ceiling below was actually bent because the aforementioned moron had used around two buckets of sand and cement to secure the floo into the cupboard from the kitchen. I asked myself what complete and total idiot with no common sense would keep pouring concrete onto plaster board?!!?! And then I remembered it was installed by British Gas…
So some hours and a Cole chisel later he’d freed the floo and would you know it the kitchen ceiling looks a lot better! This lead to the last interesting discovery of the day – and I use the word ‘interesting’ as a metaphor, because the people who had done such a wonderful job so far of installing this system had gone on to try and connect a 22mm pipe to a ¼ inch pipe with just solder… a bit further up where this had failed they had tried to use a compression fitting… further on still they had just meshed the two together and hoped for the best… I can’t imagine why it’s leaking. Again it’s been removed and put on display in the ‘how not to do it’ category.
Fun this DIY stuff I can’t wait for tomorrow.
On the plus side we cleared the pond and you can see the fish!
