Question
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the pending bathroom refurbishments.
We were in a second bathroom store, looking at shower units.
“Pump or gravity?” The salesman quizzed Margaret. She turned to me.
“Pump or gravity?”. I turned to the paint pots.
“Pump or gravity?”
Damned paint pots were silent.
“I’m not sure. We’ll check.”
I believed we had a pump, but being sensibly averse to ladders, I hadn’t actually checked the roof myself. I checked with the previous owners.
“Mum. Is there a water pump on the system?”
“No. Definitely not.”
The answer
Several hours later, I received an e-mail from Mum. Memory had returned, there was definitely a pump up on the roof.
This talk of the pump had unsettled it. Within days, the pressure dropped in the bathrooms. The haunted pump of doom was on strike. The following day, water damage was noted the ceiling beneath the water tanks. Had we offended the God of Pumps?
Yianni, our contractor, scampered up a ladder, accompanied by Andreas, a plumber and heating engineer. Together we chatted in a bizarre combination of English, Greek, Russian and sign language.
The haunted pump of doom was a thing of the past.
And the leak?
“That’s nothing to do with the pump. That’s the rain.”
Mags and I looked at each other. Neither believes that the pump is innocent. The timing was just too close.
Solution
It seems that our tanks are designed to be pump-less. Our options therefore, are:
1. Use the tanks as intended (as they currently work). More trickle-shower than monsoon-shower.
2. Replace the haunted pump of doom with a similar model. Better, but not ideal.
3. Replace the hot tank with a new one, designed to work with a pump and have whatever showers we want. Likely to make the credit card squeak.
A series of quotes are inbound, and frankly, I can’t wait to get that belligerent pump off the roof.
