Stopcock Blues

Do you know where your stopcock is?

There should be one in the house under the sink and a master key in the street that cuts off the water to the house.

Not here. First, no one even knows where it is. Then when it's located in the house it is in such a hard to reach position as to be inaccessible without removing units. However, its really old and rusted and feels like it might break, so it's ineffectual.

No problem, we’ll turn it off outside. Now, where is it? We call Scottish Water, it's their responsibility. Eventually the fella locates it along the side lane buried under mud and grit. He digs it out. It's been untouched for years.

Great, now we can turn it off and Dawn can remove the leaky taps. So she buys a ‘key’ from Screwfix. Only it’s useless and doesn’t work because it isn't strong enough and feels like it will twist and break. 

We need a big powerful one like the one Scottish Water uses but we cant find anyone that sells one, just these useless skinny ones. So we’re stuck until we can. Also, there’s a stand pipe in the garden with a separate stopcock for some reason which Dawn needs for the studio, which arrives on Tuesday to be constructed next Saturday.

These things shouldn’t be so hard to resolve, should they? I suppose it's because the place hasn’t been lived in for years so everything needs replacing but what are they selling ‘keys’ that aren’t up to the job? The difference between the one Scottish Water used and the one we bought is night and day, it's not a marginal thing.

So this is another hurdle to overcome in the seemingly endless list of things to do. It’ll be good to get the studio in place, though part of me worries that something will be wrong. Things rarely go smoothly. Though to be fair, Dawn’s carpeted the stairs this week and that went smoothly but that was counterbalanced by me losing my bank card last week. I’d only had it for 5 weeks. Anyway that’s been replaced now. At some point we’ll get on with life!!