Tag Archive: Water


In hot water, NOT !!!

At 0715 this morning, I crawl out of bed, drag my self to the bathroom and start sth shower (tank feed, via pump mixer tap job). After waking up the kids i retuen to the bathroom to a COLD shower ! DOH !!!!!!

On futher investigation, the HOT water was warm , to turn off the cold tap and have a quick shower,

Now to find the problem.

  • Radiators are warm,??So the boiler and pump seem to be functional??
  • Check the Clock, All correct and appropriate lights on
  • Check the Cylinder stat, touch it with a screw driver and it went click , and the pump wurred into life.

Seems like the Cylinder stat was STUCK open, (Off)

A??Trip to B&Q should sort that out…..

Severn Trent AARRGGHH

For years, I have complained about Severn Trent Waters billing practices of sending out bill at RANDOM intervals, on the 14th of the month Demanding payment in 10 days, like WHO has 100 quid to spare in the last few week of a month!!!!

No they have taken the bisuit,
i have just recieved my FIRST bill since January, and seeing as they managed to wriggle out of any compensation for the lack of running water for 10+ days this summer are aksing for 340 quid, are they having a laugh

Perhaps its time to look and monthly direct debit, so i check out their web site, which has SOD all information other than contact then, which I did. So after 15 minutes on a IVR on hold, i get some fuckwit who insisted on asking me what payment plan I wanted, I dont know, that it what i rang up for !!!,

AAARRRRGGHHHH,

Blonde Plumbing

Picture this (based on a TRUE story)

A blonde lady flushes a toilet to find it is blocked, and has filled up to the top of the bowl
Blonde thought process “the flush has something to to with the water going away, i will flush it again, problem sorted”

Real life, extra flush adds 10 liters of water to an already full toilet bowl,

Blonde now has WET feet !!!!

Back Home

Well it got to Friday (27th) and I’d had enough of the water shortage, so we dragged the caravan out and legged it to Somerset,

I have the lovely ability to work from anywhere i can get a good broadband internet connection.
Enter the Thorney Lakes Camp site which has FREE Wi-Fi, which based on my best guess is running at about 1.5M, Prefeck….
and that is not to mention WORKING toilets and showers

Spent All week there, i think i actually managed to get more done, than i would have in the office…

No running Water, Day 5

Well here we are, Day 5, of no running fresh water, and no form date for normal service….
Water Storage in attic is now empty so the bathroom toilet no longer flushes normally, so we are using a jug to move water from the bath to the cistern
Also have various containers in the garden collecting rain water from the conservatory and garage for future flushing etc, however it has stopped raining!!!!!!!
Been to B&Q no water butts left, funny that!
May go out of town and get some 5 gallon drums and an electric pump and start pulling water out of a local stream for toilet flushing!

We have a BOWSER right outsight the house, and watching the queues and discussions is more entertaining than big brother!!! ??It is easy to spot one or two families who seem to be sending their kids to the bowser every 20 mins,
However like many of the bowsers in Gloucester, it is empty with hours of the refill, when the tanker arrives, it is like the Branston Relish advert with the ice cream van, everyone comes running!!!!!

In the mean time I got invited to a meeting as a Watford office, an office with SHOWER facilities, so I packed a towel,

The wife has been to hers brothers and mothers for washing and showers

My son is in Austria with scouts so gets to miss all this fun, while my daughter does not seem to be bothered at all, in fact caught her going to the toilet at 0400 the other morning, muttering to herself ???I must not flush the toilet, I must not flush the toilet???

I have to say though, while people are complaining about empty bowesrs etc, i have to hold my hat up to severn trent water, in some areas bowsers were on the street BEFORE the water actually ran out, and filling and deploying 600 bowsers and sourcing another?? 1000 more from neighbouring water authorities is no easy task, as ANYONE who has ever been involved an project management will fully understand

20th july 2007 storm water flood photos

http://www.species5618.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=501

More or less water

well that’s it the water has died

and now the power is “at risk”

Doh, Doh Doh !!

While most of gloucester is flooded, the water treatment plant has been flooded and shut down

OH and the Severntrent water web site, http://www.stwater.co.uk/, has collapsed under the strain

SNIPPET FROM BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/6910559.stm

Severn Trent Water said the water supply situation was serious and is urging customers to conserve water, not run baths or hose down any dirty areas on Sunday.
The situation is serious, our pumping and treatment works at Mythe has been flooded by the water. It has been overwhelmed. We cannot remember a time the works itself have ever been flooded like this. It doesn’t sit on the flood plain it is some way off.
“Our pumps and processes have had to be switched off. We’ve had to evacuate the site.
“Some treated water is left in our reservoirs serving Cheltenham, Tewkesbury and Gloucester. If people are careful we can maintain the supply a little longer.
“We are organising staff and putting bowsers out into areas of Gloucester first then Cheltenham and Tewkesbury.
“The situation we are dealing with is truly exceptional and unprecedented.
It will be sometime, at least a couple of days, before we can supply water through the pipes again,” he said.
Some supermarkets in Gloucester were reportedly rationing bottled water to one per customer.

??SNIPPET FROM SEVERN TRENT SITE http://www.stwater.co.uk/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.3155

Water Supply Situation for Cheltenham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury – Sunday 22 July 2007
Floods shut down water treatment works at Tewkesbury????

Severn Trent Water’s Mythe Water Treatment Works in Tewkesbury has been submerged by rising flood water and had to be shut down and the site evacuated in the early hours of Sunday morning.
This means that water supplies to customers in the Tewkesbury, Cheltenham and Gloucester areas will be seriously affected for at least the next 72 hours.??
Andy Smith, Severn Trent???s director of water services, explained:?? ???We estimate that the situation will continue until at least Wednesday.?? We must wait for the flood water to subside before we can begin to assess the damage done to equipment and machinery at Mythe.?? And even when we are able to restart the works, it will take some time for the network and water supplies to return to normal.
???In the meantime, we are arranging for bowsers ??? or mini water tankers ??? to be delivered today to various sites across the towns affected to ensure that customers have access to water whilst we deal with the incident.???
??Andy added:?? ???We are therefore urgently appealing to customers to use water sparingly and, in that way, help one another to make the remaining supplies last longer.???

Flood, pestilence and technology

Well the UK has been hit by severe rainfalls again, resulting in massive flooding and a few unfortunate accidents

my cosy little home normally manages to escape the raging torrents of flood water. this time i get taken out by an indirect event. Between 19:25 and 20:30 last night most of Abbeymead in gloucester has no power. My UPS stayed up for 35 mins and then gave up, my friends UPS , (where my main internet connection comes in) lasted 45 minutes and then shut everything down !

so along come the power and everything starts to boot back up, when the firewall goes, kernal panic follwed by bad sector and then just to finish it off disk I/O error, and never worked again.
Out of all the things on my rather large home network to fail, it would the box with no regular backups or hot spare
Some mild panic ensued as all my SMTP emails and a few??business associates??fallback SMTP goes via this firewall !!!!!!!!!!!!

The firewall was, note the past tense, running smoothwall corp 3, with smoothhost , rule and guardian modules
corp 3 is over 3 years old, do i still have the media, do i have the licence key, do we have a spare HDD.

Fortunatly my slight over zealous, dont delete anything nature plumped up the software images, and the licence key
My friend the fitted a new hard disk, and installed the basic firewall software and connected it to our green network,

Then comes the fun part, re-config the beast, so working between trying to get the kids ready for school this morning, i managed to re-key all of the PAT and NAT forwarding rules , phew,

??NOTE to self for future reference, ??GHOST the disk , just in case