Kitchen sink drama

Tuesday, 17.10 pm, -8 degrees.

We have water problems. The heating cut out. The waste pipe had backed up because it had frozen. This happened last year as well so my wife knew what to do. We disconnected the main waste pipe and left the boiler dripping in to a bucket. The instant the waste pipe was sorted the heating started working again. Mental note: look for ways to stop it freezing up.

Wednesday, 7.10am, -14 degrees.

The taps in the kitchen stop working. The pipes run up the inside of an outside wall and would appear to be frozen. Also there is no hot water anywhere in the house. It's first thing in the morning so we'll sort it out later, after work.

Wednesday 22.10pm, Still -14 and it hasn't got above -4 all day.

Still no water in the kitchen. Still no hot water. Time to look in the garage (under the kitchen) and see what the pipes look like. Trouble. It's 10pm at night and I'm looking at a pipe joint with a beautiful baguette diamond of frozen water between the end of a cold water pipe and the joint. Above this further up the pipe a weld has split but has not been forced appart the way the joint has. Not good. This is mains water. When this thaws there will be a major problem. But it isn't likely to thaw anytime soon.

War summit.

We've both made our work every day through the last two weeks of snow and freezing tempratures. We know that we just can't be phoning a plumber. Under normal circumstances you are talking about a £50 call out charge, £50 per hour (with a minimum of 1 hour) plus materials. In the middle of winter in an emergency you can double those figures.

Decision:

We are both calling in for an emergency half day (possibly full day). The good news is that it's unlikely to suddenly stop being freezing so, although we have burst pipes, we should be able to sort things out quickly and more importantly dryly.

Thursday, 06.50 am, 4 degrees.

The good news is there is no ice to scrape off the car windows. F**K. The undertone in my wifes voice as it says 'I think you better come downstairs' leaves me in no doubt that downstairs will not be good when I get there. I'm trying to wake up but hear this funny hiss behind everything. It gets louder as I go down stairs but everything looks normal. I head to the basement.. You've seen it in a hundred horror movies. Why would you go down there? Why not turn the light on? You know that's where the murderer is waiting to pounce...

Imagine water, under as much pressure as you can possibly exert, blasting against a temporary ceiling and pooling all over the floor. Electric sockets etc are soaking. It's relentless. I think that, given that I'm not even awake yet, I can be forgiven for running about with one thumb in my mouth and the other up my ass for five minutes. I was basically looking for something to turn off. There were taps under the sink that I turned off. They made no difference so I assume that they literally cut the supply to the sink taps above. Is that necessary? There was no water in the kitchen despite it being imediately above the pipe that was jetting water everywhere. When I went below there was nothing to isolate. I followed the pipe back because the kitchen and garage are an extension built on to the house. The water must have been plumbed through the main house at one point. I just cant find it.

I return to the scene. I point out to my wife that the water is escaping up the way rather than down the way. I fear she may look for a tool sharp enough to kill me as she doesn't see what my point is. It would almost be worth shutting up and saving my life here but I'm on to something. The fact that it's very early and my wife is cold wet and angry should not be a reason to hold back with stupid ideas. Should it?

Let's consider the evidence: The kitchen is bone dry despite being only centimeters above the main leak. The garage pipes are the main problem but must be fed from somewhere else as the house was built long before the garage extension. I ask if we have any pipe that we could put over the gusher. Where did that come from? There's about a meter of white plastic tubing hiding in the cellar. OK. That goes over the gusher and then we can point it outside, away from the electrics and ceiling. This is a major turning point. OK so maybe it is expecting too much for me to think that my wife would congratulate this solitary moment of genius.

Nobody says it's good but suddenly we've bought some time. With this extention to the pipe in place the immediate disaster is averted. Water can now be directed away from the house and out into the drive. Don't underestimate the thinking/breathing time this buys. With this pipe jammed between two rungs of a ladder it can actually be left pumping water out into the drive. Believe it or not we can now consider a cup of coffee. This is the fix that costs plumbers thousands. It's harder to charge stupid amounts of money when the burst doesn't look like it's going to bring the house down at any second. What we have now is thinking time.

Now I really wish it had been me. I got to within centimeters of it and can only blame tiredness and panic for letting me miss it but it was my wife who found the stop cock that isolated the water. it was in the farthest darkest corner of the basement. As soon as it was turned fully the water stopped and the world became a better place. The gusher became a trickle and then finally stopped. Phew.

Provided it's accessible repairing stuff like this is no where near as difficult as you think. This is where the wife and I make a great team. I can think up the solution and do the grunt work whilst the wife (sounds male chavanist to call her the wife but I like to keep this site annoymous so can't use names) has the technical skill to cut the pipes and carry out the repairs. A good plumber would have a blow torch and solder and copper joints to carry out the repair however, fortunately for us amatueurs, plastic and rubber now rule the day. You can buy push-fit connections to replace almost any joint. What's more they do exactly what you need them to do. You push them tight and they form a perfect seal.

The moral of the story?? The turning point in our whole saga wasn't the repair. It was finding the stop cock and isolating the water. It was buying ourselves the time to stand back and look at the disater calmly as opposed to panicking. For the next twelve months this blog will be mainly about saving money. Repairing our own plumbing in the middle of winter saved us about £200. You can have all the plumbing skill in the world however it's absolutely useless unless you know where to turn the water off.

What I would like is for every reader of this blog to go now and turn on a cold tap. It could be to a bath or a sink. Turn it on full. Now make the water completely stop running without touching the tap. provided you managed to carry out that simple exercise successfully you are now equipped to deal with plumbing.

I'm still wondering however, how the hell did it get from -14 to 4 degrees over night. Is someone up there picking on us or what?

Total Saving on Plumbing £200 (estimate)

Time taken to fix 3-4 hours
Delay Compared to phoning a plumber: Probably faster.