Thursday, April 6, 2023

One's Plumbing

One's personal plumbing is not perfect and as I type this, I am to have kidney surgery on the 1st of June. 

No matter. A couple of years ago we had hot water coming in through our cold water taps. The building's plumber who was replacing the water tamping valves, that is the valves that stop gravity increase of water pressure as it comes down from the top of the building, was conveniently on site. He quickly stopped the hot water at the cold tap. But things weren't' right. Our hot water was not hot. He increased the hot water temperature and all was good, until we showered and the water pressure was too low. A couple of days later he returned and worked out a balance between hot water and pressure.

A couple of years before this, we had renovated our kitchen. We bought a beautiful and stylish sink tap. R has only recently told me that the plumber who installed our beautiful tap, that we will hate it, and we did. The pressure was so low that we could not get really hot water to the sink and it was even worse after the aforesaid plumber adjusted the valve.

We put up with the lack of decent hot water at the sink for a time but Household Management started to complain, use bad words and started talking about downsizing. When my evening meal is at risk, I need to act. I measured the kitchen tap flow, 3.5 litres per minute. No wonder the plumber told R we would hate the tap. We went to the big green shed and chose a tap with 7.5 litre flow. The building's plumber company installed the tap and even with better flow, still the water was not hot. The lads fiddled with settings and after they left, we barely had really hot water anywhere. Less than an hour after they left, the shelves under our sink were wet with leaking water. One of them immediately returned and fixed the problem. In his tight shorts with muscular legs, the hot young lad lay on our kitchen floor on his back with his head in the sink cupboard. Your correspondent felt faint and was badly in need of smelling salts. No man should look so good and so vulnerable while lying on kitchen floor. 

Nothing was fixed, in spite of the new tap and now our hot water in the bathrooms had gone cool to point of not needing to add cold water to a shower and then to lukewarm. It was so cool, I felt cold as soon as I stepped out and began to use the overhead heat lamp. We learnt that turning on a second hot water tap a bit did give us proper hot water, R turning on his bath tap as he showered and me turning on my basin tap as I showered. 

As we were about to travel to South Australia, I did nothing until we returned. A week or so later I came across our building manager, the very handsome Sri Lankan born, with great dress style. I explained our issue, and he came up with us to our floor and played with the settings, and wow, we had hot water again, very hot water. However he said our tempering valve was twenty five years old and f*****. I called the building's plumber and a 7.30 Monday morning appointment was made.  After the building managers adjustment we had really hot water at the kitchen sink and hot showers too, until something kicked in and the hot water reduced to a trickle. Turn the hot water off for two minutes and it would return to normal. This is not satisfactory for showering.

The plumbers arrived promptly and mostly worked outside our apartment as they replaced the tempering valve and a metre of copper pipe. They came into our apartment a few times to check water temperature and pressure, and at my insistence, the  water temp was set at the highest level. which would be fifty degrees. You can keep you fingers under that temperature water for a few seconds.

The luxury of simply turning on a hot water tap and adding some cold, without stoppage of hot water, and having really hot water at our kitchen sink is simply marvellous. Building supplied hot water may be cheap, but it is better to have your own water heating system.

But there is more to this story. We are billed by a meter for the gas used to heat our hot water. I don't understand it. It is something about pressure factor. The bill used to be about $40 a month but about two years ago we were told we had overpaid and we were in $20 credit. Over the subsequent two years, our hot water bill dropped to about 50 cents a month or less. We are now in $16 credit. Being an honest person of honour, of course I informed the gas company.  I expect after this tempering valve change, our bill will return to the normal amount. 

34 comments:

  1. Hooray for plumbing working as it should (both personal and building). I am glad that your home plumbing woes are fixed and hope your personal plumbing can be. And yes, I suspect that your bills will climb. So beit.

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  2. You have put up with that situation for such a long time I hope that now all your shower experiences will be pretty hot stuff.

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    1. Oh yes JayCee, hotstuff in our showers, in our dreams.

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  3. Good grief. That sounds complicated. And I thought OUR plumbing was lousy!

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    1. Steve, probably our fault for not complaining earlier. When things are almost right, you don't want bother.

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  4. It is always a challenge to get your pipes fixed in any apartment buildings. Not to mention the useless body corporate red tape.

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    1. Roentare, we have since learnt that our individual valve is our responsibility and we must pay.

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  5. Oh dear! Kidney surgery on June 1st - you have my sympathy. Will it involve health professionals or a team of plumbers?

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    1. YP, a terribly expensive personal plumber. Our health system is not as good as yours.

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  6. I hear the plumbers at our major public hospitals are pretty good at kidney rewiring. At least you will have a nice hot shower to come home to.

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    1. I wish I had stuck with the public system Caro. I am up for mega $s and it is looking like it is not quicker than the public system if my doctor had taken action sooner.

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  7. Oh, dear. Andrew, I have this suspicion that perhaps you were tampering with the plumbing just to have a plumber flat on his back and vulnerable on your kitchen floor. I'm sure that can't be right.

    And speaking of flat on one's back and vulnerable, good luck on your surgery.

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    1. Debby, I is innocent of such an accusation. Old man dreaming. Thanks. Surgeon, Associate Professor Costalot is good.

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  8. What a story. Anything I can't stand is a shower not the right temperature or pressure. So glad that you have it fixed. So glad we don't have to worry about such things. We just send a maintenance request and someone comes to fix the problem without charge. Our hot water is paid for by the village. However, we pay substantial fees to pay for these luxuries.

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    1. Diane, it was a surprise to us that as each meter and tempering valve is for one apartment, it is therefore the owner's responsibility. Generally most things like that are paid for by the owners' corporation.

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  9. Kidney surgery is no fun. Hopefully it goes quickly, painlessly and with great results.

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    1. Hels, I will paying a lot for guided robots to do surgery.

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  10. So much drama with the building's plumbing! My mum would have threatened to withhold rent until it was satisfactorily fixed.
    I hope your kidney surgery goes well and the problem is not too serious. Perhaps a simple matter of too much wine and not enough water?

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    1. River, we have learnt that it is our responsibility.
      The kidney problem cause cannot satisfactorily explained to me. I drink plenty of wine and plenty of water. I doubt wine is the cause. More like just a body getting older and not working as well as it should.

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  11. Plumbing problems galore over in your High Rise. Can't stand not having hot water. Trying to get a plumber out on the day you need one is also a problem here. Good luck with your personal plumbing.

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    1. Marie, we have no problem getting a plumber, but boy do they cost. I think we will see you before my surgery.

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  12. Yeah, there's nothing like taking a shower and having that water go from hot to cold and to a steady stream to a trickle. Most of the time I don't have to deal with that but when I do my right arm gets quite the workout adjusting the tap or shower head.

    I hope everything goes all right with your surgery.

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    1. Kirk, it is true luxury to not have to adjust a tap when in the shower. Your right arm getting a work out momentarily disturbed and excited me.

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  13. Poor boys ! what an adventure, best thing to do is not to shower anymore and remain dirty ! But now it's over and you can cook under the hot water ! Some plumbers are so good that they earn a gold medal "the worst plumber of the world" (I had one too ! I think he should have been a hairdresser !)

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    1. Anon, we are not so keen on such adventures. We like things to just work. I don't trust plumbers at all, but this company seems ok.

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  14. Oh, my godfathers, what a nightmare, not really compensated by the hot young man. Thank goodness it's remedied now.
    Sorry to hear you have to have surgery - I hope it makes life more comfortable for you.

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    1. Jabblog, my surgery will make a big difference and ideally should have happened a year ago. Thanks.

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  15. I think would have carefully photograph the plumber to document what he was doing? We have been lucky the hot water supply in our building was well designed, once in 14 years the building had a pump not working and some inconsistency in hot water for a couple of days.

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    1. TP, I should have taken a snap when his head was in the cupboard. I am too slow. We had nearly twenty years of no hot water problems. The tempering valve should have been replaced years ago, but no one told us.

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  16. Oh no, kidney surgery, I hope that works out ok. Do you have stones? Plumbing issues are a nightmare. Like us, the pipes can clog up inside with calcium deposits for ever higher pressure less output until a rupture. I cringe to the thought of a pipeline water line break (bleed out) under this house. I do know how to turn it off at the meter, if I were home, that is, to do so.

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    1. Strayer, stones were an early suspect but no. Water in Melbourne is very soft and so calcium is not really a problem here, in spite of companies trying to sell products to clean away build ups of scale.

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  17. Problems with water and sewer are my most feared issues. Yours went on for too long, for sure. Good luck with the surgery; hope it does the job for you.

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    1. Jenny, yours should be ok and I can't imagine you would do much to block sewers and drains. Blocked drains are always either tree roots or fat build up, with people flushing wipes making things worse.

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