A Frustrating Day

I tackled the installation of the new tap for the van yesterday. I expected the job to take no more than about an hour, if that. After removing the old tap, I started off by screwing the feed tails into the new monoblock, but the fact there's a recess meant there wasn't enough space to get a spanner in to nip up the nuts. It took me about half an hour of Google searching to discover that they're not meant to be nipped up and finger tight is enough.

Then it was a case of putting the whole lot together before realising the collar that holds the tap to the work surface was upside down. The whole lot had to be assembled and then dismantled about 3 times in total - there were no instructions with the tap. Even if there had been, they'd have been in Chinglish. 

Then I found out the hole in the work surface was about 1mm too small and I had to file it out to get the retaining collar to go through the hole.

I cut the piping to the correct length to join it to the new tails, removing the existing Fastfix couplings, one of which had to be hacksawed off. Then I discovered that the tail pipe nuts weren't in fact the standard 1/2" BSP, but some Chinese standard. Went out to Screwfix to get some new tails, but they didn't have the exact ones I needed. Went to B"&"Q, where they did have the right tails, but there was a delay because there was no barcode on them.

On the way back to the van, the 1/2" female to 10mm coupling had dropped out of my pocket and it took me half an hour of frantic searching to finally find it on the path.

Tried to dismantle one of the old Fastfix couplings in order to reuse it, but managed to stab myself in the hand with a screwdriver in the process. Back to Screwfix for a bag of 10mm Fastfix couplings.

Finally had everything ready to assemble for the last time before finding out that the new tails weren't quite as long as the supplied Chinese ones, meaning there wasn't enough plastic pipe to complete the connection. Salvaged some copper piping from the old tap to make a couple of inserts a few inches long to bridge the gap, but was delayed while my brother-in-law found his copper pipe cutter.

Was then interrupted by No.1 Son, who wanted me to pick up the car he'd bought earlier in the day - a bit of a shed, but I'd negotiated the dealer down from £995 to £600, so I was quite pleased with myself. It needs another £500 - £800 spending on it to get it roadworthy (although it's MoTed till March), but it was the car No.1 Son wanted and he has the budget - it's a 2003 BMW 2.0 diesel with some interesting rust around the wheel arches; not something I would have purchased myself, but he was insistent, as only someone who knows nothing about cars can be. The insurance alone is going to cost him a couple of grand a year.

It never ceases to surprise me how little the younger generation knows about how cars work. That said, they were much simpler machines in my youth.

I then discovered that the plastic piping wouldn't fit into the 10mm Fastfix couplings, despite me having measured the pipe with a micrometer, meaning I had to salvage the old couplings, which took me another half hour of looking for the bits among all the detritus I'd managed to collect.

After having started at 9am, I finally had the tap installed and working by 4pm.

However, the water pressure wasn't enough to activate the aerator, which was one of the reasons for choosing that particular monoblock. Never mind - Hay was pleased with the result and expressed a desire to have a similar tap in the kitchen, but I certainly won't be buying one from China next time.

I then thought I'd tackle the pressure switch. Opened up the water tank compartment and inspected the piping, only to discover an item that looked suspiciously like the new pressure switch I was about to install. I obviously hadn't looked too closely previously and had made unwarranted assumptions.

Now, as it didn't work, it was either broken or hadn't been calibrated correctly. The latter was the case - the control had been screwed in completely. I unscrewed it about half a dozen times and it kicked into action by cutting out the power to the water pump. Job done, but I now had an extra, £29 Whale pressure sensor spare. I was all for keeping it as a spare, but Hay was insistent on me returning it - it's a foible of hers, just like having a spare of everything is a foible of mine.

Earlier in the day I'd taken delivery of my new, Chinese, propane weed burner and so I took out my frustrations on the weeds in our parking area - and very effective it was too. It's a veritable flamethrower.