29th August 2019
Just when you think you have hit rock bottom, someone comes along and dumps in your corn flakes.
I had the boiler serviced, the engineer made sure all the taps, shower and radiators were all working well.
After he had left, I noticed there was a puddle of water on the bottom step going into the bathroom.
Panic set in, I looked around to see if it was dripping from upstairs, but there was no sign of any leak up there.
I was convinced it was in the pipe work under the raised floor in the bathroom.
I tried to remain calm and try to work out logically where the water was coming from.
The shower, kitchen and bathroom sink were all separate pipes, so I ran each of them in turn to see if water appeared on the step. Thankfully it didn’t, so none of those were the culprit. This just left the toilet waste.
I flushed the cistern and sure enough water poured out on to the step.
I tried to contact any emergency plumbers in the book, but none were available. I tried to contact my plumber Andy, but had no luck reaching him.
The one guy I did get hold of couldn’t get to me before the weekend, but suggested that I lift the floor myself and save a bit of money,
which is exactly what I did.
Fortunately the utility space was a self containing area of flooring that wasn’t part of the main bathroom, so removing it was a matter of removing the skirting board and lifting up the flooring. Once that was up I could remove the sub floor.
What greeted me will haunt me for ever.
Andy had joined the toilet to the sewer with a flexible pipe which had ruptured, spewing unmentionable stuff into the floor space.
It was disgusting and smelly. It took a long time to clean using my Henry hoover to suck everything up.
I removed the defective pipe and blocked the sewer pipe with an old piece of curtain.
I covered everything up planning to have a massive clean-up tomorrow.
That was not a day I wished to repeat.
Another Lifetime to go 