Plumbing

Living here you’re surrounded by old, historical stuff: castles, thatched cottages, Roman ruins and plumbing. Sooner or later, I knew, I’d have to write something about English plumbing. Here’s what I've learned about the history of English plumbing:

·         The pressure in the public water system used to be unreliable, sometimes strong and other times weak or non-existent. So if you opened a tap you were always in for a surprise.

·         Because of the problem with the pressure, a work-around had to found and it was. Every house has a cistern in the attic space with a ball valve connected directly to the mains water supply. The tank fills up when the pressure is good and the ball valve shuts off the supply when the tank is full.

·         The cistern has to have a lid on it to guard against dirt, bugs, etc., but the lid doesn’t seem to work very well. These tanks, over time, tend to attract dead mice or birds, insects of various kinds and mould infections.

·         All the taps in the house are connected to the cistern in the attic, except for one. As the water from the cistern can’t be guaranteed safe to drink, the cold water tap in the kitchen sink is not hooked up to the cistern, but draws directly from the mains water supply. So, we’re only supposed to drink water from the cold tap in the kitchen.

·         When single spout kitchen taps became fashionable, there was an obvious problem: The hot water comes ultimately from the potentially contaminated supply in the roof. But, once more, a work-around was found. All single spout kitchen taps in the UK have a partition all down the middle of the spout to keep the clean cold water separate from dodgy hot supply.

The two pictures tell almost the whole story about British toilets.

I said "almost" because of something I saw on the web site of B&Q, a big chain of DIY stores here in England. They are now selling Fluidmaster Toilet Cistern, Valve & Pushbutton Kit to replace all that machinery in the toilet tank; rather like the toilets in the rest of the modern world.