Household Disasters

[Zollo]

Just sprung a leak from a loo pipe! Had a massive jet a water, with huge - and I mean very, very large - amounts of pressure. Light bulbs blew, paint is pealing off walls, flat below has a leaking ceiling, and we've just got rid of about an inch of standing water.

Had to hold it off with my hand until the emergency plumber came around. Have a bruised hand and sore arm now :? .

Never seen so much water in a building before. Was like a fire hydrant going off. And it comes a week after we had 2 lumps of earth through our windows and copious amounts of mud and glass to clean up, courtesy of some little social-housing shits. :evil:

Aint life a bitch :roll:

[snakeylady]

God what a nightmare!! Hope you can claim on insurance - sounds like there's going to be lots of decoration needed.

[northy]

jesus....bet that was fun.

glad to hear its got sorted out.

[LEIGH-ANNE]

i feel like that sometimes mate!!!!

my little girl pulled the iron of the ironing board last week, landed (thankfully) on the new £1000 carpet :cry:

Now for the past couple of days my freezer has been gathering tooooo much ice so the door wont shut, hence everything going off!!!!

claimed on the carpet but freezer is a bit too old i think so gona have to spend on something other than my willy

Please feel free to laugh at my misfortune to make urself feel better :wink:

seriuosly tho, hope u can claim on the insurance

[2 live]

shitter when summat like that happens.........havent u got an internal stop tap that u can turn the water off at??


maybe a bit late now like but cudda saved u a lot of damage/bruised hands etc if u have

[TwisT]

if your going to claim on insurance make sure you get LOTS of pics of the damage, insurance is all the same with them trying to get out of it as im sure you know, and beware of 'betterment' where they want you to make an ever increasing contribution to the claim.

[Zollo]

Cheers for the advice people :D

Note going to bother with insurance, 'cos we managed to mop up and contain all the water in the bathroom before it did any damage else where. I'll do the painting myself. And the bill for the plumber was only £88 quid.


shitter when summat like that happens.........havent u got an internal stop tap that u can turn the water off at??


maybe a bit late now like but cudda saved u a lot of damage/bruised hands etc if u have


Yeah, I've learnt that now :P . Haven't got one now, but will be making sure the maintenance company put one of them in :x

[FATBOY]

thank god im a plumber myself! save me and my family loads of money! :0) what happened mate? was it a plastic ballvalve?if so was it the plastic threaded bit of the ballvalve that was persihed? where the pipe meets the ballvalve???

[Zollo]

There is an old metal elbow sticking out of the wall and a copper pipe coming from that supplying water to the loo. The way it goes from the wall to the cistern means that it sticks out quite a lot, however, and it kept getting knocked.

In the end, it had one knock to much and the copper pipe got knocked off the elbow. Couldn't have been knocked off after the release valve (or whatever it's called) could it?! :roll:

The plumber reckoned there must have been about 5 bar of pressure, does that sound right / a lot?

[2 live]

that sounds quite aq lot mate tbh lol

most of the water mains (yes the ones under the ground ouside ur house, 4" dia. +) run at about 40 m/h......which about 4 bar



but then i spose u have the accelaration effect of a 4"+ pipe to a 25mm lol

[FATBOY]

your right there 2 live but normal mains pressure within a house is 2 bar max! cos when the supply to the house from the big diameter main comes into the house it will arrive in the house via a 25mm mains pipe and then reduces down to 15mm after the stopcock! so 5 bar sounds ott to me(but mains pressure is different everywhere) then again is it mains fed???? or do you have megaflo cylinder????

[Zollo]

A what cylinder?! The plumber said the same as you, most places run 2 bar, though this was definately more. Said he'd never seen anything like it!

It's an old 20s building, so the plumbing is really old and shitty. It's all lead piping :roll: . We're below 2 other flats, and we had to turn off the water for the whole block of flats.

[2 live]

get the lead piping sorted mate...its not even used any more for h&s reasons apparently

if its tank fed the ud expect it to be gravity fed not pressurised tbh

and if its a block of flats then itl probs b tank. some have an internal PRV (pressure retaining valve) to keep the pressure the same on the top floor as it is on the bottom floor if u know wot i mean. maybe its set wrong

[FATBOY]

if lead pipe is in situ its ok! if it is damaged then it has to either be repaired(by use of a lead loc, lead to copper fitting) lead wiping is not allowed anymore!

[Zollo]

The plumbing company that maintains the flats has told the maintenance company that it should all be replaced, but they obviously don't wanna spend the money.

Will be getting the bathroom sorted rather soon now, so will replace as much of the lead piping as possible. And tuck that damn loo pipe away so it doesn't get knocked any more :roll:

[FATBOY]

The plumbing company that maintains the flats has told the maintenance company that it should all be replaced, but they obviously don't wanna spend the money.:

that is oh so true!!!! they never wanna spend the money!

[Zollo]

Yeah, and paying £2040 a year in maintenance charges, you'd have thought they have a bit of spare cash!

[2 live]

plumbers arent cheap tho mate :wink: lol