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The Tea Maker
I have to admit that I am not known for my plumbing skills. They tend to stop dead after running a bath or filling a kettle. So you can imagine my deep concern when I heard the noise of water escaping from my cistern into my toilet bowl last week.
I had visions of the bowl filling to the brim and overflowing into the foundations of the house until I suddenly recalled, from somewhere in my distant past, something called a ballcock. As the memories flooded back, something urged me to remove the lid of the cistern and adjust a little plastic screw on this weirdly named ballcock thing. This would stop the water inside from rising too high, which it obviously was, and would stop it overflowing into my toilet bowl.
With no help or support whatsoever, I figured out how to remove the cistern lid. I placed a hand at each of its ends, lifted it off and placed it gently on the bathroom floor. I then discovered, to my horror, that the plumber who had fitted my toilet almost eight years ago had forgotten to install the ballcock. Instead, he had installed what looked like a miniature version of the internal workings of a highly complex, scientific device – the sort of thing that might be used in a nuclear submarine or a spacecraft. Whatever it was, the fucking ballcock was missing.
But which part?
Logic told me that there must be some part of the gizmo I was looking at that regulated the water level inside the cistern. All I had to do was figure out which part.
I began by flushing away the water. This gave me a better view of things, but only for thirty seconds as the cistern naturally filled up again. I then spent the next half hour in this flush-fill mode until another thought from the distant past entered my consciousness. “Turn the fucking water off!” said a voice in my head. This helped to keep the water away but it didn’t help me to find the water level regulator, or whatever it’s called. There was no way I was calling a plumber. I’d have to wait a month for a five minute visit, only to be charged £1500 + vat (cash). It was time to explore the internet.
Second Best Advice
What I read was: “This advice is for push button flush systems. Remove lid. There will be two sections of apparatus in the cistern. Ignore the one in the centre. On the other piece (located to the left or right) you will see something that looks like a cup section. If you have too much water entering the cistern, this cup needs to be moved down towards the floor. Locate a screw type piece next to the cup and adjust this clockwise or anti-clockwise to lower the cup.”
I took this advice and it worked.
The Best Advice
Stop making things difficult just to keep plumbers in work. Go back to how things were when anyone could easily figure things out without a masters degree in multiple sciences.
Bring back the fucking ballcock! And…
Get in touch with all the things that product designers have made more difficult.
The Tea Maker
PS: You can comment on this story by emailing me at [email protected] and I’ll respond to your emails in next week’s column. We’ll never publish your email address.
