---
layout: ../../layouts/LayoutMdx.astro
title: End of 2021
date: 2022-01-03
dir: work6
image: pressies
description: water misbehaves
---

import { generateImageHyrdationFunction } from "../../utils";
export const s = generateImageHyrdationFunction("work6");
import Cards from "../../components/Cards.astro";
import Callout from "../../components/Callout.astro";
import Solocard from "../../components/Solocard.astro";
import NextPrev from "../../components/NextPrev.astro";
import Progress from "../../components/Progress.astro";
import YTVideo from "../../components/YTVideo.astro";

According to my watch it's been well over a month since the last update. Unfortunately, this is going to be one of those updates that contains very little in the way of house improvements. I don't know how many of you watch any house restoration channels on Youtube, but this update is going to be the annoying Christmas episode where they don't do much updating, but instead they have a lot of slow panning shots of their Christmas decorations, and an awful lot of talking.

## The Bathroom

There's been so little activity in the bathroom that I'm not even going to tell you what it was. I'll save it for when the bathroom gets its final update.

## The Plumbing

Argh! The plumbing!

<span class="badge bg-warning text-dark">⚠ amber rant warning ⚠</span>

Plumbing has been one of those activities that I feel is on the boundary of what I might attempt myself in a house - the potential for damage has always seemed too high. We didn't do any plumbing in Harrow apart from connecting up the washing machine and dishwasher.

During the last update we had some professional plumbers round to remove the cold water header tanks from our system to bring us up to (nearly) mains pressure throughout the house, and replace the boiler and hot water cylinder while they were at it.

They were planning on getting everything done in one day, but obviously they were missing some crucial part, so they left us at the end of the first day with no hot water or heating for the night, and only some of the toilets working. Simon came to inspect their work and found that they'd skimped on one of the bits that we'd told them not to skimp on 😠

The next day they came back with the part they needed and started putting things to right. Once they turned the mains water back on we found out that they'd dislodged one of the supply pipes feeding the header tanks in the loft, so that instead of trying to fill the header tank it was trying to fill the entire loft instead. We noticed this once it started coming through the ceiling on the top floor, but didn't manage to stop it until it had stained the ceiling below that as well.

Fortunately (?) we're redecorating both of the damaged rooms, but it's still super annoying.

At the end of the day the plumber pronounced the work to be complete and then had to rush off to get to some job in Bristol. Once he had gone we discovered that while the cold water pressure had been significantly increased in the house, and the central heating was fine, there was no hot water anywhere in the house. Simon came round to inspect again and we puzzled over what the issue could be. While puzzling and inspecting we found that the hot water cylinder had a fairly serious leak in the drain off valve. The valve hadn't even been soldered to the pipe! Simon then spent the next hour or so holding the pressure relief valve open on the hot water cylinder to try and prevent the drain off valve from popping off the pipe and dumping the entire cylinder of water all over our basement.

<YTVideo src="Ht3YDng0fZY" />

Eventually we got the plumber back and he managed to fix both the issues. The reason we spent so long puzzling over the lack of hot water was because we hadn't quite realised how our plumbing was set up.

<Cards
  images={[
    { title: "What we thought it was", src: s("plumbing1", "png") },
    { title: "What it actually was", src: s("plumbing2", "png") },
  ]}
/>

Spot the difference? The cold water header tank had two pipes leading out, one for the cold water and another for the hot. The plumber had only connected one to the incoming mains water 😠 They did manage to fix both issues that night.

We were due to be away from home for that day and the next, but we really _really_ didn't feel comfortable leaving the house for so long given the issues we'd had.

Over the course of the next few days we found three more joints that were leaking. The mains water in the tool cupboard, the new bathroom sink tap, and the hot water in the new kitchen. Only one of these could be blamed on the plumber, but still. Argh!

<Callout>
  Beavers react to the sound of running water to build dams, to the point where
  if you place a speaker playing the sound of running water, beavers will cover
  the speaker with branches and mud until it's inaudible.
</Callout>

I think we now know what it's like to be a beaver. Every time we hear running water there's a horrible rush of adrenaline.

Incidentally, when you finish having a shower in the new bathroom the showerhead stops immediately, but then noisily drips water for a bit around 30mins after you've finished... This has caused some hurried runs up the stairs to see what the issue is.

Argh plumbing!

## More Plumbing?

I'm not quite sure what happened in my head here, but clearly something went wrong. Perhaps I thought that we'd used up all our bad plumbing luck already, or perhaps I thought that I could do a better job than these professionals. Regardless of the reason, I decided that this would be the perfect time to undertake a small plumbing job of my own.

<Callout>Ozzy is an idiot</Callout>

One of the benefits I was hoping for with the increased pressure was to increase the filling speed of the toilet on the top floor. It was taking around 7 minutes to fill the cistern and didn't have the strongest flush even when it was full. A [long time ago](/Week1/) Henry had managed to replace the fill valve in a toilet downstairs and said that it was a quick and simple job. So, off I rushed to Screwfix to get the same fill valve and got on with installing it.

First of all, the toilet didn't have a shutoff valve for just the toilet, you had to use a valve to shut off the entire bathroom - which is located under the bath. This valve, as well as being a pain to get to, doesn't completely shut the water off - it just reduces the flow to a dribble. Never mind! This is going to be a quick and easy job!

I managed to replace the valve with the one I'd bought with minimal water in places where it shouldn't be. The valve was a bit of an awkward fit because I'd bought a different type of float valve to the one it was replacing. Nevertheless, it was now in. So I turned on the water and watched it fill nice and quickly. I adjusted the height to get it to the point where it would flush correctly and everything was going well...

...until I put the cistern lid back on. At that point I found that in order to get the water level high enough to flush, the valve needed to be so high that the cistern lid held it down and prevented it from shutting off the water... That issue was spotted very quickly!

I'll spare you the assorted faffing and swearing. There was another trip to Screwfix to pick up some other parts that I thought might help - some of which were actually useful. We've now got a shutoff valve for the toilet that is both accessible and effective and was easy to install! The plastic Pex plumbing stuff is just like lego for water!

I eventually gave up on the new float valve and was taking apart the old valve to see how it worked when I discovered that the rubber diaphragm was completely scaled up. A 2 minute rinse and massage brought it back to life and everything now worked perfectly.

I suppose the moral of the story is that it's worth trying to fix what you have.

Argh plumbing!

Right! I think that's the end of the complainy bits - Time to move on!

## The kitchen(s)

We've completely moved into the new kitchen now. We're still trying to figure out the best arrangement of drawers. Something tells me we haven't got there yet because I can't believe that a system that has a coffee-and-cheesegrater drawer is complete.

Now that the **BEEG FREEDGE** is up and running we had our first load of ice cream delivered (at 7am! 😫) from our local tasty ice cream farm 😁

<Cards
  images={[
    { title: "🍦 First ice cream", src: s("icecream") },
    { title: "🧊 First ice cube", src: s("icecube") },
  ]}
/>

We discovered that it's really annoying to buy barstools. It seems to be an item that most physical shops don't stock many of, and they're big enough that buying them online and returning them is a pain. Eventually we caved and just bought some cheap ones online after failing to find any that we were happy with in person. They will need some more adjustment, but we're pretty pleased with them.

<Cards
  images={[
    { title: "Adjusting the height", src: s("stool1") },
    { title: "Post- and Pre- adjustment", src: s("stool2") },
  ]}
/>

Our old kitchen has finally been removed! It managed to sit on our front garden long enough for our neighbours to compliment us on our new al fresco kitchen, but it's gone now!

<Cards
  images={[
    { title: "Going", src: s("going1") },
    { title: "Going", src: s("going2") },
    { title: "Gone", src: s("gone") },
    { title: "Snazzy grout!", src: s("grout") },
  ]}
/>

During the removal we found that the grout had previously been bright red! A very bold choice! I don't know if it ever coincided with the green of the units, but I choose to believe that it did :)

We pulled up some of the lino floor to see what was beneath, and it was more lino. So we pulled up some more of the lino floor to see what was beneath beneath, and it looks like it's flagstones! We haven't yet escavated the entire floor, but we think that around 80% of the floor will be flagstones, and the other 20% will be rubbish.

<Solocard title="Flagstones" src={s("flagstone")} />

This is going to be our future dining room but we don't have a plan for how we'll renovate it yet.

## The bedroom

We've finally moved back into the master bedroom! Woo!

That doesn't mean that we're finished decorating it, it just means that we now sleep in a larger temporary room. It's a lot greener than it was, but it still needs more green.

<Solocard title="Needs more green" src={s("green")} />

We had planned to finish it in the weird bit of time between Christmas and New Years, but we ran out of paint and the paint shop is closed. That's also the reason why the barstool legs are still silvery and not brassy/goldy to match the ✨bling tap✨. I wasn't quite prepared for how many of the independent shops close at this time of year, but it's really cool to have them and they deserve some time off. Once we've refuelled our paint reserves we'll get back to trying to finish it.

While replacing a radiator that I'd removed to paint behind I managed to squirt radiator water across the entire room. Argh plumbing!

## Nozzy Cook Food

The danger of mentioning cooking in a blog is that it is required to write 4 or 5 paragraphs of background story before you get to the recipe. I'm going to shortcut this by not telling you the recipe.

We spent a surprisingly arduous afternoon making marmalade from Ozzy's granddad's recipe! Even with slightly higher worktops than normal, it's still a back-achingly tiresome process to remove all the pith and pips from 2kg of Seville oranges.

<Cards
  images={[
    { title: "Ready to go", src: s("m1") },
    { title: "The tedious bit", src: s("m2") },
    { title: "Just a pinch of sugar", src: s("m3") },
    { title: "We had to quickly source some extra jars", src: s("m4") },
  ]}
/>

<Solocard title="Om nom nom!" src={s("m5")} />

We're so proud of ourselves - the marmalade is delicious! We will enter it into the family competition and it will get 🏆 first place 🏆 (prove us wrong, family!)

## Cinema Room

One of our 'wouldn't that be nice' ideas that we thought we'd never get around to actually doing, was to set up a cinema in our basement vault. Luckily Henry had a cheap projector that we could nab and fix, to try out how such a cinema would work. We bought a projector screen to go across the vault entrance (which might double as a curtain), and set up our garden seat cushions in a likely position.

It works reasonably well! We are thinking of upgrading certain bits that we think will make the biggest difference (projector and speakers), and eventually this is where we think our sofa bed will live.

<Cards
  images={[
    { title: "Cinema room setup", src: s("cinema1") },
    { title: "We can watch films!", src: s("cinema2") },
  ]}
/>

## Other things

Christmas and New Years! Woo! It's great to have a holiday again and see people. We ordered our tree from (local independent) Osborne Christmas Trees because why wouldn't we? They didn't comment on our name though :'(

<Cards
  images={[
    { title: "Christmas tree height adjustment", src: s("tree1") },
    { title: "Presents waiting to go", src: s("pressies") },
    {
      title: "New Years Walk, with New Years fish and chips",
      src: s("walk"),
    },
  ]}
/>

We're starting to think about what we want to achieve this new year. Maybe we'll even finally do something about the elephant toilet. 🐘 We can only hope.

Despite everything going on in the world, 2021 has been a pretty fantastic year for us 😁 We're looking forward to a time when we're able to host people properly.

Happy new year everyone! Hope the next year is kind to us all.

<NextPrev prev="work5" next="year2022-1" />
