"Vicious plumbing, Hamish"

I had no idea how this conversation had started. So I asked. “Well the tap made this sort of stuttering noise. And the toilet growled at me!”

At the height of the recent hot spell we were beginning to run out of water-butt water to use on the garden. So it was decided (by Lunchista) that it was about time to install the bathwater-diverter that had been bought ages ago, when I first heard this summer’s long-range forecast from the Met Office (to sum up: hot, and dry except for the odd flood). Installation wasn’t easy; it involved drilling into our house walls which are (apparently) made of “engineering brick” which is hard as nails. Lunchista is lucky to have an other half who is tolerant about all this (and did the drilling). Let’s just say that on a normal house, with normal walls and normal pipes (not the ones with some random diameter like ours, which had to be made up with duct tape), installing one of these things is a straightforward job, and we’re very happy with it. Here it is (before we put a bit of hose on the little output pipe at the top):


All those phosphates in soap that people complain about causing too much green stuff growing in the rivers (and the sea, come to that), are actually just fertiliser. And to cap it all, apparently there’s an international shortage of the stuff, and it’s starting to get expensive. So yes: unless you’re in the habit of bathing with bleach and washing your hair in Round-Up, cut out the middle-man and put wastewater straight on your garden. If it's wet enough anyway, just pull the other string and the bathwater will flow down the drain as before.

Flushed with success (groan!) I thought I’d investigate why the shower has been dripping for ages. Now there are two alternative feelings you can have if you embark on some project: either, “I think I can do this”, or “Oh NO!”. Lunchista’s feeling about anything involving mains water is most definitely the latter. Why, for example, is this post not called “Vicious Electrics”? After all, mains wiring can kill, whereas all mains plumbing can do is get you wet. Well yes, but the crucial difference is that if anything electrical comes to bits in your hands and you have to give up and call in the professionals (who won’t be available for days) you can bend the two wires apart, tape over the ends, put a sodding great warning notice on it, and then put the power back on and carry on as normal. In complete contrast, if a piece of pipe shears off while you’re trying to unscrew something, your house is without water for days. Or under it, one of the two.

As if that’s not enough, all plumbing, unlike wiring, is expressly designed so it can only be dismantled by someone who can muster just a little over the maximum amount of torque that Lunchista is able to apply to a wrench. This includes the stopcock (almost. It’s amazing what a bit of adrenaline will do). So here I am in the shower cubicle taking the tap head off and not getting wet. There’s a spindle underneath it, with a promising-looking brass nut on it. Perhaps if I undo this, there’ll be some obviously-visible fault like a rubber washer that’s worn out. I can run off to Barnitts, and voila! On the other hand (after failed attempt using the largest wrench in plumbing history), perhaps if I try and undo this, nothing will happen until I put all my body weight on it, at which point this entire elaborate-looking spindle will come away along with a foot length, with a hideously-torn end, of the pipe to which it’s connected. And a few tiles just for good measure.

I think the correct term in the business world is “Risk-Averse”.

So I put everything back together and turned the stopcock back on. An hour later the smaller Lunchistas arrived home from school and I sent them upstairs to wash their hands (the school's had a swine flu alert). Of course the air I’d let into the pipes caused the interesting noises mentioned above.

So perhaps it’s not just Lunchista, perhaps everybody finds plumbing scarier than electrics, and we might not be dealing with the rational part of the mind here. Is there something atavistically disturbing about water gushing out of walls, or disappearing down plugholes?

As Lunchista fils expounded over supper: “We’ve got vicious plumbing at school, too. I was washing my pen in the sink, but it went down the plughole. I went to tell the teacher but behind me, SLURP!! It was too late! I turned round and there was a Mrs-Thompson-shaped lump going down the pipe...”

Oh, and who is Hamish? Well he might be a plumber, or a Karate champion, take your pick!