Wonderful timing for a failure.

[Andy Champ]

11 o'clock last night turned the shower off and climbed out. It was still trickling a bit, so I turned it off and on again. And again. Then full on and off.

The valve has stuck open.

After getting dressed and rummaging in my bits box I found that the thread for a radiator valve is the same as the one for the shower head, so I put the one I had in there on instead of the spray and screwed down the decorators cap. It stopped. Phew, glad this is gravity and pump, not mains :) and so to bed.

Today intend to take it apart to see what's wrong. Start with the isolator valves (none fitted) the tank drain (none fitted) the bungs I don't have to fit, not even a carrot. Or rather two, as we have two tanks in parallel. And I don't really want to run the system dry, that's

100 gallons, and you just _know_ we'll have a shortage soon... anyway we're metered.

So tomorrow I need to find some reasonable sized bungs (or a couple of suitable sized root vegetables) so that on New Year's eve I can take the thing apart and see what the problem is. If I can't fix it - well one possible spare is over £100. But I mustn't break it so I can't reseal it and refill the system / pull the cork out :(

Glad this is the en-suite, so we have another :)

Andy

[Andy Burns]

What's that cost, about 40p? Maybe you get charged for taking it away as well ...

[Andy Champ]

Tell _her_ that...

Andy

[meow2222]

ISTR its even less than that

NT

[Andrew Gabriel]

I turned off the tank inlet, and waited for it to run out in normal use. First time it wasn't a convenient moment, so I refilled the tank once, and did it second time it emptied out.

[Andy Burns]

Since I'm un-metered, I let Google randomly pick a waterco's prices for me (Cambridge 85p/m^3) ... sounds cheaper than spending diesel to go buy corks or suitably shaped root vegetables.

[fred]

Buy corks? Free in various sizes with 0.7l purchases of wine/prosecco/port. Last emergency bung here was a plastic wine cork with a few wraps of insulating tape to bring it up to size and cross pierced with a nail as a depth stop. No meter here, just the time it takes to drain.

[charles]

most wine I get comes with a screw top. no use as a bung

[harry]

If the tank is not too deep/inaccessible, you can isolate by putting a wine bottle cork in the outlet pipe from the inside of the header tank. You might have to drain a bit of water out of it. Don't poke it in too far/use one that's too small or you will be really f****d!

[Terry Fields]

Count yourself lucky; round here water plus sewerage charges total about £6:50 per cubic metre, so 100 gallons would be £3 of water.

[Andy Champ]

£6:50 per cubic metre, so 100 gallons

OK everyone, it's New Year's eve so the boss let us leave early.

Yesterday I turned off the feed to the tanks -_before_ she had a bath, and this morning I washed my hair in the shower so there was only a third of a tank left. Application of a couple of ineffective stoppers then turn on the cold bath tap. I wasn't going to try wine corks - these are 22mm feed pipes, and they'd probably disappear down the pipe to stop at the first junction!

Pull off the knobs, take off the cover, pull off a gear wheel - and that looks like the top of an ordinary tap on the outlet to the horribly expensive bit. Things are looking up. They look up even further when I twiddle the top of it and the entire thing goes around - it turns out that accumulated scale has stiffened up the tap part, and it has unscrewed from the body. Take it off - it's a standard quarter-turn tap body - descale, turns fine. Partial reassemble (no knobs no cover) add water and it turns off fine. Can't quite work out how the little cam thing to turn the motor on and off works - it seems to be the wrong way around.

Gradually the penny drops.

I didn't know you could assemble quarter turn taps so that on/off can be reversed. I do now.

By this time of course the tanks are nearly full again :(

Ah well, now I know how it all works I'll have it apart in a jiffy to reverse the tap direction.

Andy

[Jules Richardson]

A dead mouse might work, too. Don't use a vole, because there's less tail to pull it back out with.

[harry]

t =A36:50 per cubic metre, so 100 gallons

Well if it's 22mm you can use a champagne cork with the bobble on the end. I expect you have plenty of those.

[Andy Champ]

One or two. I kept the one my mum gave me for my 21st birthday (and was then horrified when I split it halves with the girl I married) and a few other odds and sods. Do actually have one full bottle, it was half price when I went to buy some bread.

Anyway the shower is fixed, though I'm not entirely sure it doesn't have a slow drip.

Meanwhile the dishwasher has died. As kitchen refurb, including new appliances, is scheduled for Feb I can't be bothered to try and fix it.

Andy