The Shower!

The shower has been such an epic project I thought it should have its own blog post.
Before we moved the agent told us that the vendor had informed him that the electric shower was broken and she had had a quote of £150 to fix it. She would either get it done or give us the cash - we opted for the cash.
James tested the shower and said it was heating up fine so Sam had a shower the first morning after we had slept here. Although all seemed fine there was a horrible smell afterwards - and close inspection revealed that the shower tray was cracked and leaking. Easy fix we thought - wrongly! The shower tray had been concreted to the floor and had to be removed a piece at a time - it took Sam three days to chip it out! It soon became clear what the problem was - the waste pipe was not connected up!

The waste pipe is not connected

Once the tray was out Sam was able to fit a ceramic one - from Ebay, used but in good condition, £30. Once in the old shower cubicle was refitted - after I had given it a good scrub clean. The door proved tricky but we got it on again at last. Sam then sealed it all with silicone and left to dry for 24 hours.

All good we thought - wrong again! The silicone failed to set and remained wet and mushy! Sam scraped it out and applied a quick setting silicone instead. This set after an hour. 

Sam tried out the shower that evening - and smoke could be seen coming out of it - shower was abandoned and the fuse turned off!

Sam took it apart to find part of it had melted - and it had caused a leak of tar to the main fuse entry point in the meter cupboard too! 

Melted plastic in the shower

Melted tar in meter cupboard

Sam ordered a new shower on line - £72 from B and Q - for Click and Collect. I cleaned up the cloakroom ready for the new shower to be installed. While doing this I noticed some water in the corner - so dried it up. Half hour later there was more water there. I told Sam about it when she got home and investigation revealed that the main stopcock into the house was leaking. She called an emergency plumber under our house insurance - who came out at 9.00 in th evening to fix it. He relaced a part and asked Sam to turn the water back on - which she did. Sadly the water pressure caused the part he had replaced to pop off - gushing water out into the room. She ran to turn it off and the plumber mopped the water up with towels. He made another repair - which so far is fine.

The new shower arrived and Sam fitted it to the wall - on testing it everything worked fine. She was able to have a shower at last before work today! Someone came out to check the main fuse entry point was safe - which it is, but it needs to be replaced in the next couple of weeks.