Categories: uncategorized
Date: 17 December 2007 14:02:19
Guess what - there's little or no heating at school at the moment. Just like being at home!
Actually, the reason I am sitting here writing this rather than a) wrapping overdue Christmas presents for the post or b) discovering my bedroom from underneath all the junk or c) heeding my bladder's request for me to go and complete the crossword puzzle in the smallest room of the house or even d) beating Jack the Lass at Scrabulous is that the plumber is busy dismantling my kitchen and I need to be available for instant consultation about the gradient of my pipes. This may mean that we have heat and hot water for Christmas... just no kitchen! Cold turkey sandwiches it is, then.
God bless my friend B who, when she heard of our heating predicament, offered me the keys to her home for the festive season. That's true friendship.
Progress with Christmas preparations has been hindered by the central heating in yet another way too. We had rather an exciting weekend. I was up in the loft (as you sometimes tend to be at this time of year) when the phone rang and I had to lower myself rapidly down onto the stepladder and race to find the cordless phone wherever I had it last. It turned out to be in the kitchen. The phone call was important as my son needs expensive running shoes for Christmas (and here's me thought running would be a less expensive sport!) because of knee problems and I needed him to tell me whether he was a supinator or an overpronator (don't ask!) so that I could get the shoes ready for him to try on when he gets home. I wandered with the phone through to the extension, shouted "Oh b*$"*r !" and hung up on him (fine example when I'm trying to get him out of swearing within earshot of me!).
The reason for my abrupt rudeness? It was our new water feature. For once the central heating actually was working.... with typical bad timing. A tube of carpet-protective roll had fallen over, striking the pipe work which is awaiting the fitting of a heated towel rail in the new wetroom, and creating a picturesque fountain of boiling water, cascading in all directions.... and in particular over the Tesco delivery that I had been storing in there until I had chance to make room for everything in the cupboards. A panic-stricken phone call to my brother ensued (why are mobile phones always out of range when most needed?) while I frantically drained the central heating system to stem the flow.
Needless to say, the broken joint turned out to be inside the stud wall, so the next challenge was to cut a hatch in the wall so that I could see what was going wrong. When my brother left, in anticipation of a six-week break in work over Christmas, we had hidden all the tools away on the top bunk in the dark corner of Tiddles' old bedroom, which meant a mountaineering exploratory expedition with the aid of a torch in search of any tool which would enable me to cut the hole. I started by drilling a hole in each corner, then intended to use the jigsaw to do dot-to-dot. Great idea. Shame the veneer on the 12mm plywood was so hard. The saw juddered to a stop. I tried it again, to no avail. I looked to see what was happening and there was no sign of the blade. Smudgelet helpfully pointed out that it had broken off when it hit the ply and had ricocheted (unnoticed by me) across the room and wedged itself behind the Christmas tree.
Next plan - drill right round with overlapping circles cut by the circle-cutting drills (whatever their proper name may be). Hmmmm.... shame about that layer of really hard veneer on the inside of the wall - the drill would go so far and no further. OK, tiny drill holes it is, then - loads and loads of them, bored one after another to form a line through 11 of the 12 layers of ply then attack it with a chisel and mallet to break through the last bit. Chisel and mallet? OK, now where's the mallet? Needless to say, we'd packed that away too, and very thoroughly indeed. So after an hour spent drilling tiny holes and breaking jigsaws, I finally got through the last layer of veneer using a chisel and hairbrush! After that, tightening the loosened nut was child's play.
Still, the good news is....
.... the new wetroom drain works fine - the water simply ran away and the shopping mostly survived, soggy but intact.