always something

Given the apparent speed with which the previously-comfortably-fitting smaller items are now no longer quite big enough and the disruption which has been caused by grabbing a fresh item to replace one which has become unfortunately damp during the night only to find that the clean, dry item doesn't quite fit over the shoulders anymore after all the other poppers have been popped together it's imperative that these sorts of thing are stretched slightly lengthwise then hung up as soon as the cycle is finished, no matter how attractive trying to sleep would be, nor indeed applying the cool, damp clothing to the tired, dry eyes whilst attempting to sleep.

After a slightly delayed start to the day we trundled up to the old flat to meet the already-there-and-hard-at-work parents to close off a few of the outstanding issues preventing it being rented out or impeding further contractual work required to make it presentable. The bathroom is a little bit lumpily-walled so will be replastered, including the bit behind the cistern which has suffered in the past from having had lumps of Polyfilla poked down behind it so the cistern and cabinet had to come off the wall. The bedroom will be getting a nice new ceiling now that Mrs Clumpy upstairs has fixed whatever portion of her bathroom drainage systems had been causing intermittent minor floods over the past few years and will also have the walls re-skimmed, unfortunately requiring the removal of a radiator, dealt with by my dad whilst I was removing enough of the bits of wood covering the pipework behind the toilet to be able to get enough leverage on the wingnuts attaching the cistern to the bowl. The bathroom radiator was a little bit more of a problem as the nether outflow valve's flanged head had snapped off whilst attempting to revive the radiator after they were all shut down and turned off after May 2009's kitchen-replastering radiator-removal heating lockdown. An operative from the central heating installing people had visited and should have replaced the valve but couldn't be bothered, claimed to have none spare and just filed away bits off the existing broken valve spindle-stem thing until he could get enough grip on it with a massive pair of pliers to be able to open it up again and resume the room's heatability, albeit still leaving us unable to properly balance the system. Whilst normal radiators can be reasonably easily drained the straight connections on the bottom of this towel-rail-style unit meant that undoing anything led to lots of water trickling indivertibly down the feed-pipe into the space underneath the floor and thence through the ceiling downstairs. No amount of attempting J-cloth wicking worked but fortunately the broken nature of the lockshield valve meant that it could be sacrificed, the valve-spindle removed from the seat and most of the water in the radiator safely drained through the conveniently sideways-facing aperture.

It was thus slightly unfortunate that a little later on (with the radiator removed, the inlet valve closed and the pipe leading from where the exit valve had been apparently sitting quite happily not leaking any water as the system was turned off) the action of chucking a bucketful of water down the toilet (in lieu of a standard handle-operated modern flushing cistern) appeared to cause the radiator drain pipe to start spouting radiator-fluid all over the towel which had been fortuitously left just underneath it. No idea why this might happen - the central heating circulatory system should surely be entire separate from the drainage system (unless there was some sort of weird thing going on with the air pressure in the room due to the movement of water in the toilet bowl) but shutting off the remaining two connected radiators seemed to stop it happening again, though perhaps only because a significant amouint of fluid had already been removed and there was no longer sufficient to bounce out of the pipe when the pressure fluctuated. A quick pop to the nearby Homebase to see if they had replacement valves proved fruitless so it'll be another little job to do in the next few days so that the plasterer is able to use the toilet when he arrives, though I quite liked the idea of leaving lots of pipe-related instructions around the place to make sure he paid attention to the pipes as it would mean that his attention would be pre-drawn to the pipes when he reached the instruction requesting him to not yankingly bend them back from the wall so much that they end up slightly kinked, as demonstrated last year on the kitchen radiator in fear of which I then remained in case it suddenly snapped and started leaking.