Worst disasters - Plumbing Forum | Plumbers Forums

John t · 20-07-2007

Last year , in the middle of a bathroom re-fit, came the time to turn the water off. For one reason and another, I had to use the outside stop cock, for such an old house the tap turned fairly easily, until the corroded handle broke off anyway!! So here I was, A house with no water and a broken tap buried 750mm under a patio AAARRRRGGGHHHH With this stop tap being the wrong side of the property line the water board couldn't help me, with more experience I should have looked for the one in the street then it's the Water authorities problem if anything goes wrong. After an hour of trying to get a pair of mole grips on this 'stump' at the bottom of a 6" sq hole, there was nothing else for it but to grab a pick axe and dig. Plan A was to dig around it and replace the tap, lead pipe as well of course but with time running out I reverted to plan B. strip the tap in-situ, get the tap open and use the stop tap in the street. As luck (?) would have it stripping the tap down gave me a bit more of the stump to go with the mole grips, (and I had dug a 'cavern ' around the tap so I had a bit more space.) Well the tap turned and you could have heard my sigh of relief miles away.
Any body else had a fun day?

**uug197h** · 20-07-2007

Not had one that bad yet, I fitted an electric shower today did all the plumbing did the electrics, New fuse, 10mm wire under the floor and down the wall in the kitchen, tested the electrical work to part p turned the shower on and RCD triped tryed this 3 times tested the wire to the shower got power to where it should be pressed the switch to turn the shower on RCD triped again, Must be shower fault told customer to phone fault line as it had a two year warranty, customer had shower 12 months in the box no receipt what can you do

titch2411 · 22-03-2008

did a bathroom for my friends son last week as he had damaged the bath removing tiles,took a call of the son today guess what he's done !!!! only damaged the new bath and broke the tap off ...you guessed it dropped another tile on it .. kids !

09-04-2008

Took some floorboards up once when i was doing a bathroom for a mate and slipped on a wet joist and put a leg through the newly plastered, still-wet ceiling, but haven't we all?