Quick – get the Plumber

What a disaster – the hot water stopped running last night – although there was no problem with the cold tap.  What to do?  We’ll sleep on  it and sort it out in the morning.  Sadly, a miracle didn’t happen overnight and the hot water still refused to run.  We have only been in our new home since March, so certainly didn’t expect any problems like this.  Robin contacted the building contractors bright and early in the morning, and they promised to send a plumber around sometime during the day.

The friendly young plumber turned up after lunch, and said that he was the one who did the plumbing work on our house.  Up in the attic he went.  There was not much room to manoeuvre, and he had to tread carefully on the ceiling joists.  Out came his wrenches and he then proceeded to undo the pipes leading out of the hot water cylinder.  He didn’t really know what was wrong,  perhaps the filter had clogged up.  Nope – that wasn’t the problem.  A few more joints were undone and he got his answer. The rubber non return valve had perished and needed replacing.

What’s the problem here?

With all the recent earthquakes happening, I was a bit worried about the hot water cylinder being up in the attic.  “No worries”, he said.  “See that wooden tray”, he said, “which the cylinder stands on?  I made that myself, it’s solid as anything and much better than what the builders would do.  Your cylinder is well braced with strapping, and it won’t move”.  That was reassuring to know.  

Hot water cylinder sitting on it’s special flooring

I climbed back down the attic stairs to run the hot taps.  After an initial splutter, the hot water came gushing out.  Great, that crisis is now over.