When the levee broke

Matthew Huish
December 21, 2010

A couple of Saturdays ago, I was on course for winning husband-of-the-year award. I had vacuum-cleaned the house, cooked the dinner, put the children to bed, washed the dishes, thrown out the rubbish and I had also pulled out the nasty hairy gunk that was clogging the shower drain. I was feeling rather good about myself.

Then I returned to the kitchen and noticed that the tap was still dripping a bit. A quick turn of the hot and cold water handles revealed that the tap was actually leaking slightly. Then I did something very typical of Matthew Huish, which was to shake the tap with brute force to see if that would solve the problem. Needless to say, it made matters worse, and the tap was now gushing hot water uncontrollably.

The husband-of-the-year nomination washed down the plughole. Natasha was not best pleased. Before my wife could begin to lay into me for being such a brutish thug, she began panicking about what we should do. I tried looking under the sink for an isolation valve of sorts, but there wasn't one installed. I then thought about the stopcock that would cut off the water in the whole house, but couldn't precisely remember where it was. Rather than panicking, I decided to call our the company that does our plumbing. While I was waiting for the automatic recorded voice message to end so I could speak to a real person, Natasha had found the piece of paper (left by our landlady) that informed us all the REALLY important info, like where the stopcock is. We quickly found it under the stairs and turned off the water.

The next concern was our central heating. We weren't sure if turning off the water would be a problem for the boiler and the heating system. We erred on the side of caution and turned off the boiler. We spoke with some telephone assistants representing our gas supplier and they didn't seem too sure what we should do. (Surprising, if you think about it -- it ought to be their area of expertise.) We spent a couple of days without heating (in this freezing weather) and kept warm with layers, until our property manager assured us that the heating system was isolated and would not be affected by the water being cut off. Thankfully we could turn the heating on again.

For more than a week, however, we had the water turned off for most of the day, except for when it was really needed. I would turn the stopcock and quickly wash dishes, have a shower, fill bottles of drinking water, flush toilets and fill a bowl for washing hands, and then turn the water off again.

Finally, our property manager sent a contractor to replace the tap. So now we have water on demand and no more leaking tap.

The last week and a half have been very challenging, but I have been ever mindful of the fact that I should be grateful to have running water at all. In this freezing weather, I should be grateful that we haven't suffered a burst pipe. I should be grateful that we can keep our house as warm as we need it to be. I guess the bottom line is that even despite this setback, I have been very grateful.