I was replacing our leaking hot water cylinder this weekend - what a
joyous job it is!

Anyway, I needed a small piece of 28mm pipe to repair a very badly
soldered (yorkshire) joint on an old gravity hot water circuit (will
change to fully pumped at some point - but thats a job for another day!)

The soldered joint was quite something - the pipe had been cut at a very
bad angle and must have slipped before it was soldered so that about
half of the pipe was in the joint by a couple of mm and the other half
was not quite in. The pipe went nowhere near the solder ring. I assume
that when it was soldered, enough ran down the inside of the joint to
create a watertight seal with the pipe - but offered no mechanical
protection at all. It had obviously lived happily for years in this
state, but when we started clanging about with the pipework it came undone.

The biggest problem was that the joint was boxed in halfway down a wall
and we had no idea that there was a problem, so we happily sat in the
loft and turned on the supply to the f&e tank and waited for the system
to fill up so we could check that the connections to the coil in the new
cylinder were sound (obviously the holes weren't in the same place so we
had to **** about all day changing the pipework). We suddenly heard a
scream from below as SWMBO walked into the living room to see water
dripping through the ceiling!

Anyway, I digress. Back to B&Q. We were lucky enough to catch it, as
this was about 3:30pm yesterday and it shuts at 4pm. I rushed in with
time to spare and grabbed the only bit of 28mm piping I could find - 3
bloody metres of it! We only needed a bit! Anyway, looked at the price
- £15.98 - horrified! So, I took it to the checkout knowing I didn't
really have much choice, and the young girl on the checkout looked up at
it, grabbed a ring binder full of bar codes (there wasn't one on the
pipe) and asked, "Is that 3 metres of 22mm?"

Well, who was I to argue over a few mm? Ended up paying £7.48 which was
still too much but I felt happy anyway!

Had to bend the bloody thing to get it in the car - so if anyone wants
2.8m of 28mm copper pipe with a bloody big bend at one end, let me know.