Its been a funny old day.............

Simple small plumbing job for a regular customer, 10 year old detached
house. Not done any plumbing work there before however.

Could not find any internal stopcock anywhere. Looked in all the obvious
places, asked the neighbours where theirs were, customer didn't know.

No problem. I'll turn of the water outside. Customer happy with that.
Found a metal access cover, lifted it to find 4 x meters & 4 x plastic
stopcocks - not a label in sight, chamber about 22" deep, just about able to
reach them when kneeling directly over the chamber.

Cunning plan. Got the customer to stand by his kitchen cold tap, went
outside & called him on the mobile. Turned off stopcock one. No joy.
Opened it again.

Stopcock two, shut off, no difference. Opened it again and to my surprise a
jet of extremely cold water at surprisingly high pressure made contact with
most of my upper body. Second surprise was to find the top part of the
bloody stopcock in my hand.

It hadn't broken, simply come undone, not a dissimilar arrangement to a
normal tap jumper.

The chamber rapidly filled with water, overflowed and soaked my knees &
lower legs, thus completing the job of 100% saturating a handyman. Huge
quantities of water are now flowing down Robin Hood Drive.

I spent the next 35 mins trying to get the bugger back into place. Local
kids found this great fun, jumping it & out of the rapidly flowing torrent.
Eventually gave up, having lost all feeling in my right arm due to the
freezing water.

Customer was surprisingly calm. I got him to call the water company & spent
the next half an hour sitting in the van, engine running & heating on full
blast, wondering just how much this was going to cost me, and how it would
affect my public liability insurance premium. I did dry out quite a lot
though.

Water board bloke turned up & spent 20 mins trying to get the stopcock
screwed back in. He couldn't manage it either. I felt better.

Eventually he removed the water meter thus lowering the pressure
significantly & managed to screw it back in, muttering & cursing about 'poxy
plastic stopcocks, always doing this'.

He then checked the other three & found two of them (the two I hadn't yet
touched) hadn't been tightened up properly either. He used a giant basin
wrench type thing to tighten them up.

He put his tools away & returned from the van. I expected a large bill. To
my surprise & delight he profusely apologised for the inconvenience caused
by the poor installation! Result!

Never boring this handyman malarkey.........



--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257

The Medway Handyman wrote:
Its been a funny old day.............

Simple small plumbing job for a regular customer, 10 year old detached
house. Not done any plumbing work there before however.

Could not find any internal stopcock anywhere. Looked in all the
obvious places, asked the neighbours where theirs were, customer
didn't know.
No problem. I'll turn of the water outside. Customer happy with
that. Found a metal access cover, lifted it to find 4 x meters & 4 x
plastic stopcocks - not a label in sight, chamber about 22" deep,
just about able to reach them when kneeling directly over the chamber.

Cunning plan. Got the customer to stand by his kitchen cold tap, went
outside & called him on the mobile. Turned off stopcock one. No joy.
Opened it again.

Stopcock two, shut off, no difference. Opened it again and to my
surprise a jet of extremely cold water at surprisingly high pressure
made contact with most of my upper body. Second surprise was to find
the top part of the bloody stopcock in my hand.

It hadn't broken, simply come undone, not a dissimilar arrangement to
a normal tap jumper.

The chamber rapidly filled with water, overflowed and soaked my knees
& lower legs, thus completing the job of 100% saturating a handyman. Huge
quantities of water are now flowing down Robin Hood Drive.

I spent the next 35 mins trying to get the bugger back into place. Local
kids found this great fun, jumping it & out of the rapidly
flowing torrent. Eventually gave up, having lost all feeling in my
right arm due to the freezing water.

Customer was surprisingly calm. I got him to call the water company
& spent the next half an hour sitting in the van, engine running &
heating on full blast, wondering just how much this was going to cost
me, and how it would affect my public liability insurance premium. I
did dry out quite a lot though.

Water board bloke turned up & spent 20 mins trying to get the stopcock
screwed back in. He couldn't manage it either. I felt better.

Eventually he removed the water meter thus lowering the pressure
significantly & managed to screw it back in, muttering & cursing
about 'poxy plastic stopcocks, always doing this'.

He then checked the other three & found two of them (the two I hadn't
yet touched) hadn't been tightened up properly either. He used a
giant basin wrench type thing to tighten them up.

He put his tools away & returned from the van. I expected a large
bill. To my surprise & delight he profusely apologised for the
inconvenience caused by the poor installation! Result!

Never boring this handyman malarkey.........

You often find that as a 'workman' rather than a member of the public, the
services people will rarely make things difficult - We chopped a gas main in
half with a mini digger last year, luckilly the main was down for being
removed anyway as it was a shop and the owner didn't want the hassle of
having gas in the flat upstairs neither.
Transco came out and put it down to a 'gardening accident' resulting in no
charge....I've witnessed similar mishaps relating to ancient electric mains,
mostly in pubs but occasionally houses and in these cases too there has
never been any charges.

"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message


Never boring this handyman malarkey.........



--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257




So you couldn't see the main pipes entering the house anywhere?

Begining of last year a neighbour phoned me up and asked could I come round
straight away as she said the CW pipe has fractured? by the washing machine.

Went round and I traced the main incoming pipe from the cellar up to where
it entered the kitchen but I could not find the stop cock.
Turns out her ex had moved it from the cellar and cut into the pipe behind
the sink units but the unit had to be moved to gain access,doh!

In message , The Medway
Handyman writes
Its been a funny old day.............

Simple small plumbing job for a regular customer, 10 year old detached
house. Not done any plumbing work there before however.

Could not find any internal stopcock anywhere. Looked in all the obvious
places, asked the neighbours where theirs were, customer didn't know.

No problem. I'll turn of the water outside. Customer happy with that.
Found a metal access cover, lifted it to find 4 x meters & 4 x plastic
stopcocks - not a label in sight, chamber about 22" deep, just about able to
reach them when kneeling directly over the chamber.

Cunning plan. Got the customer to stand by his kitchen cold tap, went
outside & called him on the mobile. Turned off stopcock one. No joy.
Opened it again.

Stopcock two, shut off, no difference. Opened it again and to my surprise a
jet of extremely cold water at surprisingly high pressure made contact with
most of my upper body. Second surprise was to find the top part of the
bloody stopcock in my hand.

It hadn't broken, simply come undone, not a dissimilar arrangement to a
normal tap jumper.


"You're the Drivel in disguise,
Oh yes you are
You're the Drivel in disguise ..."


--
geoff

On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:41:36 GMT
"The Medway Handyman" wrote:

Its been a funny old day.............
Snip
He put his tools away & returned from the van. I expected a large bill. To
my surprise & delight he profusely apologised for the inconvenience caused
by the poor installation! Result!

Never boring this handyman malarkey.........




and the moral of this story is: Don't let BT into the plumbing industry
or you'll have £120 call out fees in no time!

R.

The message
from TheOldFellow contains these words:

and the moral of this story is: Don't let BT into the plumbing industry
or you'll have £120 call out fees in no time!

They didn't used to charge private customers.

Some time ago (10 years plus I should think) a tree surgeon was pruning
my neighbours large sycamore which overshadowed my drive and managed to
take out my telephone line with one of his off cuts. He rang BT
pretending to be me (on that grounds they would have charged him) and
they replaced the line for free.

Line has since been replaced for free again after the crane on a BM
wagon snagged it. Line is now above minimum height rather than below it.

Last year my brother in law managed to cut through a line when trimming
the hedge ad the fee was over £200. Struck me that as he had been
standing on the ground as he waved his hedge cutter about he had a good
case for protesting the fee but he didn't want too argue.

--
Roger Chapman

wrote:
Thus spake The Medway Handyman )
unto the assembled multitudes:
[...]
Cunning plan. Got the customer to stand by his kitchen cold tap,
went outside & called him on the mobile. Turned off stopcock one.
No joy. Opened it again.

Stopcock two, shut off, no difference. Opened it again and to my
surprise a jet of extremely cold water at surprisingly high pressure
made contact with most of my upper body. Second surprise was to
find the top part of the bloody stopcock in my hand.

[...]

He put his tools away & returned from the van. I expected a large
bill. To my surprise & delight he profusely apologised for the
inconvenience caused by the poor installation! Result!

But did you ever find out which stopcock served your customer's house
and
complete the small plumbing job?

Yes I did! It was number 3.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257