Oh NO! Again

Rotten weather today – wasn’t supposed to be as bad as it has been, but a sudden squall blew up with a nasty sky and from then on it rained for most of the day. I thought I’d have a go at getting my bent mower blade off but I’m blowed if I can loosen the retaining nut. So before I took all its corners off, I decided to take it to the garden equipment repair workshop in Thonac and see if they could repair it or a fit a new blade for me. The guy there didn’t want to know. He said that he’d never seen a blade like it before, so the signs are not good. He muttered that with the damage it’s got, the engine is probably defunct but I don’t believe it. So it looks like I’ll just have to persist in trying to get the nut off myself somehow – if necessary I’ll cut it off with my angle grinder so I can see which way the thread goes and get a replacement from somewhere. It can’t be that special. I’ll probably end up having to find a compatible blade and fix it myself, but quite honestly I’ve got enough jobs on the go at the moment 😕

So I then turned my attention back to installing the wall-mounted water heater in the bathroom, and that’s what the title of this thread relates to. There’s always been a slight niff in the air in there and up to now I’ve always put it down to there being a gap around the washing machine outlet tube allowing odours to get back up. Up to today that is. I’m going to use the washing machine water supply as the supply to the water heater and break into the hot feed to make a connection for the outlet. The heater also needs an ‘evacuation’ outlet and the washing machine outlet pipe is ideal, so I thought the job would be quite straightforward once I’d broken the surrounding tiles away to give me access. As soon as I did that I uncovered the horrors that had been hidden. See the picture below.

Initially I was just dumbfounded to find that whoever had installed the plastic washing machine waste outlet had not cemented the bend onto the horizontal section (see 2 in the pic), so for years, every time the washing machine has been used, the joint has leaked dirty water. That alone would have been enough to explain the smell. But even worse, when I checked the ‘T’ that connects the cold supply to the washing machine inlet (see 1 in the pic) not only was it soaking wet but it was also leaking quite badly! This is horrendous and rather worrying. Whoever did the plumbing was either incompetent, a butcher or both. Remember that the ‘T’ from the cold supply to what was the supply for the dishwasher in the kitchen is also leaking and leaving a damp patch on the floor below it – so that’s two faulty soldered joints out of the two that I’ve checked. Part of the problem is down to what I said in an earlier post – the French capillary joints are only available without solder inside them, unlike the ones used in Britain, so solder can only be applied from outside the joint when it’s been heated up to temperature. This is very hit-and-miss. Both parts of the joint need to be scrupulously clean and well fluxed and the plumber’s technique has to be perfect. If not, you get the result that I’ve now got to try and rectify and what worries me is how many more are there like the two I’ve now found?

Now I’ve broken the surroundings away from the washing machine inlet pipe, I’ll not be taking any chances tonight and I’ll be turning the main water supply off. There’s not a lot more that I can do for now, but I didn’t expect that I’d be the victim of someone else’s complete and unutterable incompetence in quite the way that I have been 😐

A note of optimism to end with though – after today’s rather depressing weather, the forecast for the week-end is even better than it was, with no rain and light winds forecast for both days, and temperatures of 26 degrees Celsius for Saturday and 32 degrees for Sunday. That may mean conditions becoming a bit thermic, especially on Sunday, but it looks as though I’ll be able to start on getting my French ‘brevet’ and Victor will also be able to continue with his training. We’ve both waited long enough and it’s about time!