This and that

Once again I have had a break from blogging and while, as I’ve said before, I don’t like to get too personal here but we have sadly just lost a third family member in four months and our lives have been in a bit of turmoil of late.

Added to that we got back from a weekend away at a friend’s sixtieth birthday get together to the sound of running water in our kitchen. The next morning our neighbours who are joined to us (Edwardian semi detached) came round to say that they could hear running water in their kitchen and it was even louder than ours.

We could find no evidence of water any where and turning off both houses internal stop cocks made no difference. We then tried to turn off our external stop cock which is on our patio outside the kitchen and found that it didn’t work.

Outside stop cock

It’s the black square on the left of the patio.

Open

We could only undo three screws as the other one wouldn’t turn at all. We were able to pry it up like this. It has a little water in it and a little movement of the water.

We called out “home serve” who we have insurance with but they sent a plumber who couldn’t deal with anything that is outside.

Our neighbours in the meantime had called out the water board. They came the next day and identified a stop cock at the end of our neighbours property on the other side and this turned off the water to all four houses (two Edwardian semis). He then turned the water back on and listened to our outside stop cock. He said the leak appeared to be close to this as far as could tell.

It turns out that one water supply goes to all four houses and the pipes are buried deep underground. In the meantime all four houses have had kitchen extensions built over the original pipework, long before our time, I might add.

We have “home serve” coming out again on Friday and they will attempt to dig out our outside stop cock and replace it with a working one. They will then turn it off and see what happens. The water board felt that the leak must be close to our outside stop cock.

If it is the direction of our house they may need to dig up our kitchen floor. If it is in the direction of next door they will have to dig up our boundary and their path.

The whole thing has been very stressful but now that we have established that water isn’t coming into the houses we feel a bit happier although we do wonder where all the water is going. It has been running since Sunday evening.

We have been getting our heads round the possibility of our patio being ruined at best and our kitchen floor being ruined at worst but we will just to have to have them redone if necessary. The insurance will cover making good whatever they disrupt but not matching the surroundings. They will contribute and we will have to make up the difference but we are now resigned to this.

With the many phone calls and visits to neighbours and various water people visiting us there hasn’t been any time for blogging.

In case anyone hasn’t seem the comments, when we got back at four o’clock on Sunday Cinnamon was out in the run and has been ever since. After three weeks she is over her broody spell. The girls were all fine and the three bigger girls had slept outside once more as was evident from the poop under the high branch perch.

I removed the plastic square from behind the perch on the other side of the hatch and threw it away. There were two eggs from Ebony and Flame in the high nest box and one from Dandelion in the patio nest box. We ate those the next morning for breakfast as they had been out of the fridge but not in high temperatures.

The double holly hock that I photographed in an earlier post is now over but another stem has shot up since we have been away with single blooms. This all came from one pot so we have two for the price of one.

Hollyhock

Echinacea

We planted this earlier in the year and it is giving a bright splash of colour. It was so small that I didn’t really expect it to flower this year.

I will update on the water situation when I know more and will be back to chicken news quite soon.