You would think that with three bathrooms in one smallish cottage, I should have an embarrassment of plumbing amenities. There’s what an estate agent would call the main “family bathroom”, an en-suite in my bedroom, and a very handy shower room in the extension. But over the last few weeks, it all started going wrong.
The electric shower in the en-suite broke, there seems to be a leak in the shower in the main bathroom, and the shower in the extension won’t drain properly, even with several bottles-worth of drain unblocker. Then to really cap it all, the flush mechanism broke on two out of the three toilets so that they were unusable. Either I’m very unlucky, (or clumsy?) or there’s a design flaw, as exactly the same thing went wrong at the holiday cottage in Ironbridge last month….
I’ve been meaning for a while to call in a plumber to sort it out, but have been so busy at work that it never got to the top of my to-do list. However, when the second loo broke, that was the final straw! I was on to my final back-up and Something Had To Be Done. I didn’t want to call in the plumber I used last time, as I didn’t like his attitude. But the new one comes with recommendations and seems to be polite and efficient.
He turned up when he was expected, with two plumber’s mates, and sorted out the immediate problems. He’s cleared a blockage in my main drain, which was causing the drainage problem with the third shower, and has fixed both the broken toilets. The electric shower will have to be completely replaced, so that’s a job for another day, and the leak in the main bathroom needs to dry out before it can get fixed. So he’ll come back in a couple of weeks to finish the job. But at least I know have one working shower and three functional toilets – which is significantly better than I had this morning!
