Where there's Muck there's Brass

"Find out how your Water Works!" said the email. It was from our water company, and I had to think for a while before I remembered how on earth they had come across my email address.

It all started with the premiere of "The Age of Stupid" in our city: Lunchista was asked to make up the numbers for a press stunt on the river bank. In the event our local eco-enthusiast par excellence turned up on his bike with the usual trailer full of cadged wood bits for his stove and stole the show, so I needn't have bothered. Except that, watching his small daughter skipping stones into the river, and totally innocent of our activities, was a bloke called Dave. We got talking, it turned out he worked at the water company and I happened to be curious about where our used water goes, so I gave him my email address.

The email offered a choice of times, so I chose the quietest, mid-afternoon during the working week. They'd booked one of the corporate-type meeting rooms (complete with bar) at the race-course. Togged up for a bike-ride to a working site, Lunchista felt distinctly under-attired for such a posh venue. But it was either that or wading through pools of muck in my green velvet cocktail dress and tiara. No contest, really.

The opener was one of those bland and eminently forgettable corporate films, following a perfect and immaculate family as they go through their perfect and immaculate day using whatever it is that the company provides. I'm sure there are college courses in making those videos.

Then things got interesting. Stepping off the coach at the site you're hit by the smell: the drop-off point happens to coincide with the part of the site where the waste water arrives. Mostly it's from the city's loos, but when there are floods some of the water washed off the streets gets in here too. The main contributor to this hum, though, was the grille that separated out all the insoluble things that people, in their absent-mindedness, flush down the loo. These all end up in a skip, from which, our guide told us, someone's false teeth were once retrieved...and they carried on using them!

Next stop was a giant metal shed in which lurks an Anaerobic Digestor. The stuff putrifies and gives off Methane, which is caught, purified (for example there's some Sulphur in there that has to go), and then used in essentially a miniature gas-fired power station. The electricity from this powers most of the rest of the site, and the heat is piped off to be used in one of the other processes further down the line. The stuff is now "sludge", which is a lot less unpleasant than before, but still brown and murky. The bacteria that start to digest this seem to work like a "yeast plant", in which some is tapped off at the far end and re-used to start the process off at the input end.

By now I was either getting used to the smell, or in the grips of sinusitis again. Or else perhaps it really was the case that this bit of the site was just plain less smelly. After that it was time for a spot of aerobics (not for us, but for the sludge). This stage is polished off in the bit of a sewage works that everybody's seen, in which water-jets come out of long gantries that sweep slowly round a giant circular pool. We came up to the edge of the 50-yard wide pool, and the water coming away was clear. It smelled slightly "earthy", but that might just be because we're all used to a spot of Chlorine these days.

I got out my camera for what would have been a terrific shot of the circular pool reflecting our city's two famous landmarks (the Minster and the old Chocolate Factory) and the absolutely cloudless sky...but no photos were allowed on site, and they didn't sell postcards, so I'm afraid you'll have to make do with a picture of our tour-guide's file. Which is a pity, because they also have something of a wildlife reserve, next to where all the solid results of the enterprise are composted in long rows. There's an arrangement whereby local farmers can ring up and ask for deliveries of the end result, to use as fertiliser. With no heavy industry (not even chocolate manufacture) in the vicinity, this stuff remains refreshingly free of things like Cadmium, which were a problem in other places in the past. It also means we get to keep things like Phosphorus and Iodine, without which the whole of life on land would collapse, swiftly followed of course by Lunchista's house price.

I also noticed there were no flies on the site. And it was spotless. And all this for only 17 million quid, the sort of sum they find down the back of the sofa during a bank bail-out.

Small price to pay to stop the country going down the toilet.

"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!