For a yuppie place, the Distillery plays some righteous funk over the tannoy during rush hour on a Tuesday. Ran up the canal at the end of a long day at the labs and, now dusk, it was too late to continue running on the homeward commute without a better torch. Cider was just over 4 quid — steep, but not extortionate.
The morning commutes will get a lopsided representation until the sun returns from Winter hibernation and the clocks change at the end of March. Currently, this run represents the 5th morning commute compared to 2 evening ones. But, less than a week since the last one the dawn breaks 9 minutes earlier; hope springs.
Graffito, above, is close to the Pulp Fiction one from the first commute last year. There are endless sights to see on the canal journey.
The builders we talked to suggested it would take two workers 10-15 workdays (20-30 man days to be un-woke about the terminology) to finish a bath like the one we want. After 5 full days working solo (not including time spent shopping and designing), I had finished pulling the flooring then routing and leak checking the hot and cold supply plumbing everywhere it was required. This photo, a few hours before completion of that task, shows the state of play with full 15-25 man-days remaining:
That was the hardest of the plumbing work and the most likely to go wrong; however, the next bits were the more nerve wracking: routing the sewage and drain pipes overhead with respect to the downstairs ceilings on its way to the standpipe and out to the sewers. We bought some diamond core saws and started in on the big paths through the walls.
The walls on these old houses are 9 inches (22½ cm) thick and the morter is essentially concrete. I did the 40 mm one for the tub and sink waste Saturday and the 117 mm one for the toilet/soil pipe Sunday which left everything in the pink room coated in an dust the colour of Grenadine. I would have done both on Saturday except for breaking a pipe in the OLD (current) bath whilst chasing the soil stack which is hidden in the walls and which will be coupled to this waste stream on completion.
The main stack is nearly 3 meters away, though, and while we could get away without it I decided to put in a supplemental air admittance valve (an AAV) as a de facto 2nd soil stack. This ensures no siphoning during the longish drop from potty to sewer. Regulations say the AAV needs to be 8 inches (200 mm) higher than the wastewater entrance, so we went with 16 inches to be good citizens (and to prolong the life of the device).
The tub came with feet but they were bright, shiny chrome-plated and ghastly. Here they are after primer and two coats of wood stove paint:
The final soil plumbing connections will be done next Saturday (1 Feb) at which point we will start to lay the subfloor after initial continuity-and-leak testing and inspection/signoff. With any luck, the floor tile can go down and the toilet get attached the week of 3 Feb (and the rest of the bath bits put in place the following weekend). Shits getting real.
Working man-days so far: 7.
Deathly ill Monday and not much better Tuesday and Wednesday; still, I had important shit to do at work and soldiered on working late each day. Any form of exercise more strenuous than opening a pack of Strepsils was out of the question.
Thursday was a bit better and I made the journey down the canals in the atmospheric pre-dawn fog. The gorse along the way has been in bloom all winter and seemed cheerful. The 9½ miles seemed to regenerate me all day. As I write this on Friday over coffee, I think I have relapsed.
Foggy and below freezing, the weather cared not for my quest. I had to retrieve for fair damsel her passage documents to Leicester one day hence, some plumbing fittings, and a flagon of ale before I could return from Dudley with my dignity intact. Ice formed in my hair and spectacles as I rambled on.
I picked up the train tickets and the compression hardware then continued on to Dudley, a town famed for its medieval castle (which is now the local zoo). Speaking of a zoo, like all Wetherspoons at 9 am on a Sunday the Full Moon teems with exotic creatures.
It is Burns Week at ‘Spoons and I’m usually already ¾ haggis by this point in the celebrations. Tempted to order some as a side to some beans and toast, I opted to finish the ale, neat, and venture back out into the now sunny morning.
It does my heart good to see young mums getting hammered mid-afternoon with their babies in prams next to them:
The Shakespeare is the closest pub to the Grand Central Metro Stop. I really should explore the city centre more.
The weather has been relentless this winter. No real cold (so far only a couple of sub-freezing days and most get out of single digits Celsius) but frequent rain and strong, gusty winds. Still, I don’t want to let a whole week pass without at least one commuter run (this early in the game) and the Friday morning forecast looked even worse (less blowy but more drenchy).
Starting a little early since I had instrument time in the morning, I struggled to stay on the tow path in the headlong 25 mph winds. My eyes watered the entire distance. The run was hard work, I couldn’t hear my radio, and I stepped in puddles that soaked me to my knees at least 5 times per mile along the nearly 10 mile, mostly canal route.
Really ready for Spring.
Continuing on from the initial plans, our hardware started to arrive the 2nd week of January. All the straight pipe for water supply and the toilet came on Friday, then the toilet, tiles we ordered Sunday , bathtub, sink and heated towel rack on Tuesday. By Tuesday afternoon, we had checked everything arrived okay and started on the first tasks.
The old radiator blocked access to the wall through which the plumbing would eventually pass but removal required completing the hot water circuit so the heated towel rack got plumbed in as a place-holder. We will take it back out to put in the sub-floor, tile backer, and tiling but for now it is standing there providing heat over the canyon of exposed trusses.
This was probably the hardest of the pipe soldering to do. The pipes were “wet” since they were in use and had to be dried before the clean-up and solder work. Also, one of the old unions was directly over a snake nest of electric cables and both straight unions and 90° joints to fit were next to very old, very dry timber. I protected these with fire bricks and some flame resistant sheeting and only caused a wee bit of smoulder smoke to emerge.
Pressure checks look good — no leaks 2 days in. Real plumbing Saturday and with any luck the flooring will start going down Sunday.
We had an advance booking for the sake of economy so we had to board a specific train back from the tile hunt. I reckoned on exploring the area for the rest of the afternoon but Jackie’s cold took a turn and she was too ill to do owt else for the day — a pity as the weather was lovely.
We headed back toward the train station, grabbed a Sunday paper, and killed off the afternoon in the glow of a projection screen tele silently displaying football matches as we nursed some wine at the Railway Inn. I’ve spent worse afternoons.
The wife could not make up her mind about the floor and wall treatments for the bathroom. This is the problem with internetting and translation of the images onto a 3-D AutoCAD drawing of the bath: some people don’t believe the drawings or photos are accurate and really require seeing the bits in situ.
She did, however, narrow choices down and found a shop where the prices for the sorts of designs we could both live with were 50-70% less than the dealer that has a showroom in every town in the country. This is how we found ourselves in Tunstall, Staffordshire on a Sunday afternoon.
We finished up the purchase after going back and forth with, “but the glazed Metro tiles will look weird with the matte porcelain ones,” and so on. The sales dude asked if there was anything else he could help us with. “Suggestions for a pub lunch?”
He sent us toward what we assumed, when we passed it earlier, was a derelict building but he assured us it was a pub (the White Horse) and that they do a good Sunday carvery. We must both have been squinting at him and he added, “no, ignore the signage falling down, it’s actually quite nice inside.”
And, so it was. Quite the local hangout and when I asked for red wine with the food she quoted 3 glass size prices, with large at £4. “And, the bottle?” She informed me the bottle would be 11 quid with an inflection to say that only a madman would spend that much…because, from the looks of the other clients, DRINKING that much would not be an issue.
The carvery was good. Most of the veg was overdone by all but British standards but still retained flavour despite the efforts of the chef. Very happy with the outcome, today.
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 