more gripes of pipes

Bloody plumbers.

Not only in the way they are purported to work but also in the way they design the things they are responsible for fitting and maintaining.

I knew my nice little midweek flexi-day-off was in trouble when the bloke who stores things in the ex-shop immediately beneath our flat popped up on Sunday evening to say that our bathroom was leaking onto his boxes even though he was exaggerating somewhat with his "it must be the soil pipe, you can really smell the urine" (which he irritatingly pronounced yure-ine to rhyme with fine, brine, twine and mine instead of PROPERLY) which was borne out by our discovery of a small but persistent driplet from the pipe feeding the cistern.

Various experiments with tightening the fitting and reducing the pressure at the isolating valve over the past couple of days failed so today I poked around a little more and resolved that the problem was the compression fitting where the inlet joins the cistern. Luckily this means no plumbers need be involved in the repair (I'm happy to fiddle about with wires and structural elements but don't do any sort of pipe-work for fear of causing leaks, explosions or both) but the relatively simple task of removing all the pipery from the cistern in order to lift it a little and pop a fresh nut and olive on the end of the inlet-pipe is made excruciatingly difficult by the idiotic placement of all the bits of hardware to which access is necessary in order to disconnect enough things to be able to move the cistern around the pipe seeing as the pipe is unmoving. It wouldn't be so bad if it were mounted on a plinth in the middle of the floor with six feet of clearance all the way round but as it's tucked in a space only as wide as itself between the bath and the wall it's a little difficult to get at.

At least I get a little bit extra of the late afternoon off on Friday for doing me-things such as collecting a nice new printer from a shop. I had a little break doing computerstuff this afternoon but as it consisted of trying to find and process pictures of nickysisterchilds where they're in focus and not grimacing it wasn't really a break as such. Friday probably won't be either as they need to be printed up and mounted in order to be posted to the subject's grandmother next week.

There's always Saturday.

Though I haven't started shopping yet.



Bugger.