Monday 17 February 2020

A sign of the times?

For a week or so now, one of our toilets has not been flushing reliably, although it could be made to flush by pressing down on the ball and getting a bit more water into the cistern.

But I could not see how to adjust the ball valve so that it shut off the water intake rather later that it was. The relevant screw seemed to be at the limit of its travel.

So we invoked our British Gas maintenance contract and in fairly short order along came a plumber, who quickly announced that the problem was somewhere else altogether, in the large, more or less rectangular plastic washer which sits on the open plastic frame which sits inside the syphon assembly and which is connected to the handle. Problem in that it had split in half. Ten minute job to put right.

Something that I have probably done myself half a dozen times over the years, often using plastic cut from a plastic sack, the sort of sack you get from garden centres. I think I had even put aside a few bits of plastic for use in the future.

But on this occasion this washer never made it to consciousness. I was focussed on the ball valve, something I have known about since childhood, when syphons didn't have washers of this sort at all. All part of my regression back into childhood?

PS: next morning: inquiry this morning reveals that I did indeed know about these washers as recently as six years ago and they were noticed at reference 1. This morning's challenge: to find the stash of washers from Wolseley.

Reference 1: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/06/diy.html.

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