Shower swamp - Return of the Creature from the Back Lagoon

Or no good act goes unpunished.

The shower drain is up to its old tricks again. This time instead of plungering the drain I decided to take the U-bend off to see if there was an ongoing blockage in it. Not sure why I chose this course of action but in retrospect bringing out the plunger first might have been a better idea.

The U-bend is easily accessible, as it is located in the unboarded roof of the cupboard that the fridge sits in. The drainward joint unscrewed no problem but the upstream one felt like it was attached with a liberal coating of treacle. When it came off it appeared that it had been slathered in silicone sealant.

Bodged connection to shower tray

The U-bend was pretty clean, no doubt an effect of the energetic plunger action I had applied previously, so no problem there. The receiving pipe, however, had a 'dead mouse' of matted long hair wrapped round the 90^o bend that lies after the trap (I'll spare you the pictures). I extracted this and refitted the U-bend.

On reassembly the reason for the silicone sealant became obvious. The top joint of the U-bend had been damaged at some point so it was not forming any sort of a seal and the silicone had been put into to bodge the joint. Without the silicone the range of the shower extended from the bathroom into the fridge cupboard.

Damaged seal on bath trap

Time for a new part (40mm bath trap) from our very local plumbing supplies company. Reinstallation was easier as the silicone had been removed but the joint was still weeping a bit, probably because of a slight mismatch between the thread sizes of the PVC pipe and the metal shower outlet. A bit of PTFE tape solved this problem.

Repaired bath trap

JOB DONE.

Time taken : 45 mins hands on
Cost : £5.48 for replacement bath trap

Cup issues

One of the tykes has been too rough with a plastic cup and, while it isn't dead, it is not very happy.

Cup with an internal leak

Broken drinking straw

As the first of the 3 Rs is to reduce I wanted to try and prevent another plastic cup being bought.

The first job was the straw which was missing a bit, but not too much. A quick hacksaw and then I filed it flat and removed the burrs with a round file and that sorted that.

Repaired drinking straw

The next task was to deal with the cup. How to get the water out and how had it got in?

Getting it out meant giving it the opportunity to escape the air gap that gives the cup its' insulating properties.

Non-obvious holes

Drilled 1.5mm holes at 4 and 10 o'clock

Two small holes should give the water the ability to evaporate without compromising the insulating properties of the cup too much. Then it was just leaving it for long enough to do just that.

So it sat next to the central heating boiler for a month.

OK, so how is the water getting in?

Repaired cup

It seems to have developed a crack at some point (after being dropped perhaps?). Solvent welding using capillary action to wick the solvent into the area that needs to be bonded would probably be the best option. But what solvent to use?

The first thing is to identify the plastic that the cup is made out of. In this case the retailer's website wasn't helpful but as they only rebrand stuff (and slap on a healthy margin for the service) you can find similar items out there. Alibaba is a great resource for more detailed product information as you can get direct to the manufacturer. In this case a search for 'tumbler with straw' quickly yielded a couple of identical items (bar the printing/branding) [cut down links to ali items].

In this case it appears that the plastic is SAN, which is commonly used for food-ware and is a relative of ABS. A search for suitable solvents yielded

• Acetone [propan-2-one]
• Methylene chloride [dichloromethane]
• Methyl ethyl ketone [butan-2-one]
• Ethylene dichloride [1,2-dichloroethane]
• Tetrahydrofuran [1,4-epoxybutane]

Courtesy of the AdhesiveTechnology Handbook [p.222].

I have the first three to hand, but acetone is the more pleasant to work with, so I brushed on enough to saturate the fractured area to see if that could seal up the break.

The fracture wicked up the solvent OK and it has had an effect but not a complete one. I have another fix that will use a dichloromethane/MEK mix so I will return the cup to use and try again when I tackle that fix.

JOB (sort of) DONE

Time taken : 30 mins
Cost: Pretty much nil

Buying loppers

The ivy on the shed has got beyond a joke, to the point where it is almost structural now. Time to get cracking, err hacking.

Spot the shed!

No better on the other side!

And so we did, I roped in the tykes as lump labour. But secateurs can only get you so far and sawing back the ivy branches was a major pain in the posterior. Time to up the duty level and get something with more grunt, ie bigger secateurs, aka loppers.

Generic loppers

Apparently there are two sorts, anvil and bypass. The latter is for gentler, precision pruning of things you want to keep, ie not the ivy. The former has more grunt but leaves a messier edge and can cause more damage to the green thing you are applying it to, which sounds like just the job.

So time for a bit of tool shopping, what a drag….

There is a wide choice of types of mechanism on the market with a range of prices from dirt-cheap Chinese brands to stupidly expensive (and I assume sharp) Japanese ones. Too much choice really for a novice like me. The first decision to be made is whether to buy cheap or get something that will see out a few seasons.

A pair of cheap Chinese loppers can be had for £12-15 from eBay, and if I thought that clearing the ivy would be a one off job then they would do. However as the ivy is likely to fight back and there are also other woody plants in the garden that will need attention over time, I will make a branded name purchase.

As I am not going to fork out for multiple pairs of loppers I want the pair I do buy to be able to handle as broad a range of tasks as possible. That will mean the capability to handle thick branches and telescopic handles to increase the range of situations that they can be used in. There's no need for them to be lightweight as A) I won't be using them all day and B) I should be able to handle the weight. Finally, I am agnostic on the cutting mechanism apart from the fact that simpler is better (less likely to break).

Getting hold of a decent review proved more of a challenge than I thought it would be. There were a lot of the 'top 5' type, with monetised links off to Amazon and lots of pictures of factory fresh tools that had never been used in anger. The most useful I found were from Gardening Products Review and Fred-in-the-shed. Fred basically sold me on the Wolf-Garten loppers, if they can last 10 years use and still get a recommendation then they will be OK for me.

Wolf-Garten sell 3 different models of anvil loppers. The pair with largest cutting range and telescopic handles looked like the ones for me (model RS900T). They are pricey at £90, but Mr. Amazon will give you them for £50. Decision made.

Wolf-GARTEB RS900T Telescopic Anvil Loppers

Attack!

Post-cutting

Nice sharp, fresh cuts

Have used them for a few sorties on the ivy so far and they have worked no bother, smooth cutting action and, as ivy is not very dense at all, capable of cutting anything that I can get the jaws around. Process is now to fill up the green waste bin with ivy cuttings every two weeks, we are 12 weeks in and not much of a dent made.

Time taken: About half a day to do the research and spec the loppers
Cost: £49.99 (inc p&p)

Energizer Universal Battery Charger repair

Groan, the dishwasher is broken again. Out with the multimeter.
Groan, the multimeter's rechargeable battery is flat. To the battery charger.
Groan, also not working.

Sometimes you end more steps back than forward.

Q. How do you sort out what is wrong with your battery charger when the battery in your multimeter has gone flat?
A. Buy a spare alkaline battery.

Well off to see Mr. Tesco for a quick fix,

Multimeter back into operation

Now the multimeter is working, but the battery charger (and dishwasher) are still broken.

First things first, is the charger getting juice from the power supply unit (PSU)? It should be outputting 12 V DC, but is actually supplying 0 V. Culprit identified.

After popping the cover off the PSU and giving it the once over there are no obvious shorts or burnt out components. So no easy fix for this.

Battery charger PSU internals

The part # for the Energizer Switching Mode Power Supply is CHEUF-ADP-UK. I don't have any experience with switched mode power supplies, but apparently they are popular as they are small, lightweight (in terms of transformer size) and power efficient. The circuitry in the Battery Charger PSU includes a mix of discrete through hole and surface mount components. As I am not sure how the circuit is laid out or which of the components is faulty, troubleshooting is not likely to be a quick or painless option. So time to think of some other routes to getting the charger functional again.

The first option is to replace the PSU in its entirety, not very green I grant you but better than chucking the whole charger and replacing (you would think).

But not if you want an Energizer PSU. For a start Energizer don't sell them,

Thanks for contacting ENERGIZER.
Unfortunately, we do not sell spare parts.

We remain at your disposal,
Thanks
Kind regards

Energizer consumer service

which is not the epitome of responsible corporate stewardship. Or in their words "we believe everyone has the power to make a positive impact", aka " we believe everyone can buy into our corporate greenwashing, while we can't be bothered to ship out replacement PSUs even though it would be a stupidly easy thing to do, just throw your charger in the bin and buy a new one like a good consumer, screw the planet. " At least they ponied up the information quickly though.

The on-line sources were not attractive [Amazon - unavailable, eBay (used) - £12.95, on-line search - £17.00], which are almost as much as buying a brand-new charger [£17 vs £20], which on point of principle I am now refusing to do.

The next option is to buy an OEM wall wart with the same rating, much more reasonable at £3.88 arriving on a slow boat from China. A cynic would note how it looks almost identical to the Energzier one. However it is still remotely possible that I could fix the original unit which would then leave me with two. Not that that would be a major issue.

OEM charger PSU

Thinking about using an OEM PSU lead me to realise I hadn't been through the parts bin. Happily a search through the bin yielded a PSU from a long since deceased scanner which is 12 V/1.0 A rated. A bit higher than the 12 V/0.6 A of the original charger but available immediately at £0.00.

Sounds OK, but the DC power plugs are not the same, grr. Both are 5.5 mm OD, but the spare is 2.1 mm rather than 2.5 mm ID so won't fit the charger.

Different internal bores of DC power plugs

Back on-line for more searching to find a DC power adaptor for £1 off eBay.

Battery Charger fix complete

…

Wait a month for the slow boat from China to arrive.

…

Unpack and plug in replacement charger. No issues, but won't leave on unattended for a while just in case.

JOB DONE

Time taken : 5min to put in new plug, 2 hr to work out what was needed, 30 days to receive part.
Cost : £0.99

Land Rover Discovery 4 tonneau cover fix

The Major appeared with her tonneau cover in two pieces. The lever to unlatch it from its socket in the boot had completely separated from the tonneau cover. It all looked to be in one two intact pieces so should be an easy fix.

Broken Landrover Discovery IV tonneau cover

From the looks of it the latch had wriggled out between the two parts of the cover. There was a large gap between the parts, when compared with the other end,

Gap between cover parts

and on inspection there appeared to be a screw missing.

No screw

Screw

A search of the parts box yielded a similarly threaded but slightly longer BZP self-tapping screw.

Original (lower) and replacement (upper) screws

As I wasn't sure it would fit, I put it into the other end from the latch and it went in OK. I then tried to fit the original screw into the latch end hole, which illustrated the underlying problem as it spun round in its hole; a stripped thread in the socket. Swapping the position of the screws around made the fix, as the longer screw cut a new thread deeper into the socket.

JOB DONE

Time taken: 1 hour
Cost : £0.00

This is a nice illustration of the importance of not ditching, recovering from scrap, or not walking past unattended odds 'n' sods fixings. Sometimes you just need one. Supplying it from the parts bin will save a couple of quid each time versus having to go out a buy a pack.

Also tonneau is quite a cool word.

The Big Push

Well another year has past and I've not done anything large (or small really) to the house. But after a leak from our unvented hot water tank The Major and I decided to get rolling on a refurb for the futility room.

The saga begins.

The old tank is lodged upstairs in one of the bigger bedrooms between the chimney breast and the front outside wall. The idea is to move the unvented tank (which can be anywhere on the hot water system as it is pressurised) from the upstairs cupboard and fit the new one into the utility room, thereby freeing up a cupboard upstairs.

Elderly Megaflo unvented hot
water tank leaking in situ

This means removing some of the fitted cupboards in the utility room to get the new tank into place and then getting it boxed in. As the current units are worn old 80's Moben ones it would seem to make sense to fit new cupboards. Also the current boxing for the pipework that runs around all sides of the room (as it has a mains gas supply, two mains water supplies, the central heating boiler and grey water piping) is pretty ropey so we may as well renew that as well. There is also the matter of an intermittent leak from the roof that has been an occasional annoyance.

Proposed location for new hot water tank
in corner of room (where toolboxes are)

So the plan of action is

• Get plumber in so we can have hot water without soaking the hall and the front door jamming open.
• Have builder in to look at the wall, get any required repairs done and make good any damage.
• Bring in a kitchen fitter to box out the new tank and pipework and get new units installed.
• Complete any general decorating.

Everything should done by Christmas and the first room will be off the refurb list. Seems straightforward...

Shower swamp - The Creature from the Black Lagoon

The drainage of the shower has been getting steadily worse, so that now the shower tray turns into a foot bath when used. The Major has been applying one of her many potions to it, but the results have been only a temporary alleviation of the symptoms.

Eventually it annoyed me enough to bring out the sink plunger and give it a good thrashing.

Action stations!

Unfortunately rather than clearing a partial blockage in the shower tray I enhanced it into a complete blockage and blocked both drains of the basin and bath as well. Result 😒.

On the plus side this meant that whatever the blockage was I had moved it into the common drain for the bathroom which was outside and should have been easy to get to. An inspection confirmed that, although access was a little restricted, I must have dislodged the blockage into the downpipe as the hopper was full.

Camouflaged waste water drainage system

First order of business was to assemble the gear for hacking through the undergrowth.

Jungle-busting gear

Then cut along the garden path,

Before                                      After 

along the path in front of the kitchen window,

Before                                    After 

and finally into the corner.

Before                                        After    

A green wheelie bin full of greenery later proper access to the hopper and downpipe was afforded; time taken - an hour and a half.

A bit of rodding with a garden cane and whatever was causing the issue disappeared into the drains and the problem was solved; time taken - 5 minutes.

Flooded hopper

Post-rodding

While I was at it I cleaned out the drain,

Grotty                                                    Clean

and with that the drain problem was solved and I went looking for someone to help with the clear up of the bathroom.

As to what caused the blockage in the first place, who knows?