Plumbing the depths

Yesterday, after tennis, I had to repair the cat-flap that the prisoner had almost destroyed. He really wants to be outside. So much so that C rang the vets and got permission for an early release (for bad behaviour).

And water started spraying out of the bottom of the tap. I was able to effect a permanent repair by wrapping electrical tape round the column. All we had to do was sell the house and make it someone else’s problem.

Or order a new tap from Amazon selecting the delicer this evening option.

The instructions looked straight forward but the flexible tails were too short for our piping. So, this morning, with the help of baby brother (plumbing superman), I worked out the combination of joints and pipes and we used an old flexi pipe that he had knocking around and two pound’s worth of new flexi pipe from B&Q. All good and no leaks.

Tidying up, I noticed that the wrapper of the new pipe said “Not suitable for drinking water”. That was OK as it had gone on the hot tap but how about the old pipe we had put on the cold tap? After a bit of Googling (the word “toxic” made its presence felt), we got three pounds worth of new pipe from Screwfix.

Looking at the old tap, the leak was caused by a long hairpin crack in the brass. I imagine that it must have got bashed at some point. The chrome has been bubbling up a little for a long time. But the tiny crack that must have existed had turned into a bigger one and the chrome was no longer keeping it in.

A further complication emerged when I opened up the crack to see if the walls were unusually thin. The water is actually carried up via an inner pipe. So the crack shouldn’t have mattered. But I suspect that the tap rose must have failed leaving water to go back down the column.

Hey ho. Still, it’s all good now.