Thanks, Bob

On Monday night, I made pork with green butter for Mirinda and Bob (and me, of course) and we decided the evening was so nice, we’d eat outside. All the windows of my office were open. Bob, very helpfully, pointed out that someone hadn’t painted the inside of the window frames. Well, that has been remedied. I primed them today, ready for painting (maybe) tomorrow.

And so I set to, paint brush and (small) ladder to hand. It had all day to dry. And while I was at it, I gave the chest of drawers another coat of raspberry. It looks much better now.

The plumber arrived at about 2:30 to fix the shower pump. Nice chap who’d been to us before, firstly to fix a few leaks then, having ascertained his competency, to install the new boiler. He remembered my broken arm.

As he toiled away, trying to locate the problem, I set to a bit of long overdue butterfly extraction. Back before we lived in our house and the Old Rose room was used as a kid’s room, two butterflies were stuck to one of the windows. They, somehow, went with the stars on the ceiling which glowed in the dark. The stars, obviously, went when the ceiling was plastered but the butterflies remained. Until today.

I thought the butterflies were just simple transfers and all they’d need would be a bit of a work out with a scraper. Not so. They were made of some weird gummy, rubbery, ooky stuff that wasn’t that keen on leaving the glass. It took me a lot longer than I expected but, eventually they were vanquished.

Meanwhile, the plumber declared that he was 75% sure the problem was the cheapest and easiest option (I didn’t remind him of Occam’s razor), the one where he had to replace the valves in the taps. However, on removal of the old ones, he realised he’d have to go and buy a couple because they were bigger than anything he had in the van. And so he left.

He also told me how the pump and tap combination works. I thought the mechanism was somehow attached to the tap but this is not so. It’s far simpler than that. The operation is centred on a small ball bearing which sits in the inlet water pipe. When there’s no water, the bearing sits happily, minding it’s own business, with the pump in the off position. Then, when the water is turned on, the ball bearing is moved by the water, to sit on a small contact which turns the pump on. Here it remains until the water is turned off and it rolls back to the off position.

Remarkably simple yet elegantly effective. Except when the water keeps running through the pipe, leaving the bearing on the contact. This is what seems to have happened…which is why he figured fixing the tap valve would sort it out. And he was correct.

He sweated and twisted and eventually managed to get the old ones replaced by the new ones and, voila!, the pump turned on and off and the water ran as it should. And then came the bill. Pretty expensive (mostly because of the valves for which he had to eventually drive to Camberley).

Mind you, had the problem been with the pump, the bill would have been a good deal higher and he’d have been a good deal unhappier.

So, we now have a fully working shower (though the tap handles are now quite stiff). Sadly, because of the time he took and finally left, Date Night was cancelled this week. Though, as Mirinda said, it has been a short week, with her working from home on Monday, so it’s not too bad.

And for today’s Bob update…he managed to meet up with Sue and Graeme in Wales and, hopefully, is now in Ireland.