Redemption
Now before I start I must say… I really enjoy my job and where I work.
But… I really wish I had chosen to be self-employed, just the luxury of being able to do what you want and when you want, that would be just wonderful. I’m not saying that I’d sleep in till midday and not do an inch of work all day, far from it as I think I’ve proved on my days off. I just wish to have the ability to choose.
Y’see your own time is the most precious thing you have, you sell it to an organisation and you have to be there at a certain time, for a certain time and you’re only allowed to go home at a prescribed time. You’re a prisoner of a schedule and you’re in trouble if you have to waver from that schedule.
Well I don’t want any of that, I want to be my own boss and tempting though that is there’s a slight problem there, what with money and all. Just be patient though I tell myself, work hard on the house and a few years down the line you may be able to make the leap. Remember though that even after all this it’ll still be hard work to get things going and make a go of it.
It’s a bit like escaping from Shawshank Redemption prison and I reckon.
Stay with me on this.
Every spare moment I get and I’m up all hours working on the house, I’m basically in Shawshank behind that pinup poster on the wall chipping away at the concrete. Steadily I work my way through, inch by inch, closer to my goal of escaping on the other side. Years and years down the line I manage to break through and you know what, even when I’m out of the other side there’s still two miles of s**t I have to wade through.
But it’ll be worth it unlike this rotten metaphor
Anyway what did I get up to this weekend. Apologies for the few pictures this week, I just got caught up in the moment and only remembered to take the pictures of the tee-joints after I’d hidden them with some floorboards, so no pictures there of my lovely tee-joints.
Well there was the small matter of finishing off after I’d pinned down all the plywood. I only had a day to do them but I reckoned I could have them all done by the end of the day.
Y’know you’d think I’d have learnt by now wouldn’t you.
The jobs involved plumbing and tackling some floorboards that needed pinning back down but sadly it all became three times the job I expected.
The plumbing was to fit tee-pieces to the hot and cold water copper pipes on the first floor and then using plastic pipe route them downstairs. Not too bad a job but the copper pipes were right snug up to one another and it took a lot of work to fit the tee-piece and then course the plastic pipe in that it wouldn’t cause any obstructions. After this little job there were then some shoulders and shut-off valves to fit and that would be that job polished off, simples.
It seemed to go to plan at first, my tee-pieces were jollied into position and with a liberal application of jointing compound it seemed to all go nice. So with crossed fingers I released the stop-cock and rushed upstairs to admire my joints. The joints all dandy I meandered downstairs to find my shoulders and valves all nice and dry. I retired to the utility room and heard the ominous sound of hissing coming from the under stairs cupboard, it turned out a plastic tee-fitting I’d installed last week wasn’t secure, this lead to some moment akin to a WWII submarine movie with me tightening up the joint while being squirted with water, however a good soaking later and it was all tight as a drum again.
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Strange thing was that this pipe was the cold water supply and I’d swear that the water was warm. A bit of investigation later and sure enough the plumber had accidently labelled the pipes wrongly, he must have lost sight of them from upstairs to downstairs, a genuine mistake but it cost me some precious time to switch it all around.
Once this was out the way there were plenty of other jobs to tackle, mostly they went to plan, but there were some hiccups, like figuring how to attach the flow-meters to the manifold, like fixing the ever so stiff pipes to the manifold (I drew a bit of blood doing this, not uncommon but I’d not noticed until switching the light on and finding the white pipework smeared red).
Fitting the floorboards down was a bit of a trial, there was a hole in the floor upstairs and a matching one downstairs. These holes had been created to access the central heating and fresh water pipes, pinning the floorboards back down may have seemed easy but there were bits that needed to be fitted with sympathetic noggins and some of floorboarding had to be cut down to size while one even needed a bit of extending. All in all not such a simple job.
Along with this I had a car full of timber to sort out, to store then to refit the car with all the bits that had been removed followed by a good sweep to clear all the woody detritus. I had my washing and some cleaning to do etc. etc. etc. it just went on and on.
By the end of the day I’d thought I’d done everything so I relaxed with a pizza and the Blu-ray of Mad Max. Just as I was about to start the movie up I checked on my to do list and found a large job that hadn’t been done, but hell no, I decided that securing the air vent lid, insulating it and fitting mesh to stop vermin could wait a few days. Actually by the end of the day I had another interesting event to occupy my mind too. I’d lit the fire in the late morning and had had it burning steadily all day. I’d not needed the radiators on so all the hot water was going to the thermal store. On wandering upstairs this suddenly occurred to me and I popped open the store’s cupboard door only to be met with the temperature needle nudging 90 degrees for the store. It seemed unphased and merrily doing thermally storey things but this was 500 litres of water sitting at close to boiling point. As it seemed to be handling it well I could have just left it on but instead I turned all the upstairs radiators on and merrily got my bedroom up to 21 degrees in no time at all. Believe me this would have been impossible with the old radiators, windows and lack of insulation, this was rather luxurious.
Interesting to note too that the hot water coming out of the taps wasn’t a smidgen hotter than normal, y’see the thermal store transfers heat to the hot water supply using an external plate heat exchanger (that’s the boxy thing in the top right of the picture below). This has an automated thermostatic control and will heat water to a predetermined heat, even if the store is chugging along at nearly 100 degrees it didn’t send out water that was any hotter than it should have been.
It’s amazing how long these jobs took, I’ll be sure to start stripping and maybe decorating next weekend, but who can say. Still never mind, I now have all the flooring back in place, I can safely wander around the house without having to wear boots or fearing that I might fall down a hole. It’s good too that my little girl can now visit too without it being too building site like.
NOTE TO FUTURE ME:
Fitting flow meters to an Emmeti radiator manifold
Pull out the split pin affair from the flow valve on the manifold with a sharp object then using an allen key locate the hex fitting on top of the manifold valve and unscrew the plastic blanking screw from the valve. Screw the flow-meter into this hole finger-tight, refit the split pin and hey-presto if you’ve read this you’ve just saved yourself a half an hour of trying to figure out how to do it… again.
Fitting the pipes to an Emmeti radiator manifold
Fit the metal threaded fitting to the pipe, push it all the way home, mark on the side of the pipe where the pipe meets the fitting (to let you know how far to push it in). Take the fitting off the pipe – do not try to fit the pipe with the fitting on it. Offer the fitting up to the manifold and lightly screw it in a teeny bit, push on the pipe now and push it home until the mark you made meets the edge of the fitting. Screw the fitting and pipe onto the manifold and hey presto if you’ve read this then you’ve just saved yourself twenty minutes and a bit of blood trying to fit an unbending pipe with its fitting onto a thread that never seems to want to screw on.