The General Chat Thread (2023)

Status
Not open for further replies.
caseydog said:
A lot of Americans believe that the framers of the US constitution were in lock-step agreement. In reality, they argued over a lot of things that we still argue about today.
Click to expand...
Somewhat different in the UK - we´ve got a "de facto" constitution, but written in several different documents.
As for the arguments, in an ideal world, I surmise the constitution of a country should be reviewed every now and then on an obligatory basis, simply to update
 
Look how the Universe mocks me - it puts this kickass shirt in front of me:

9F1FB1A0-7DCC-4450-A8DD-C273EDD80770.jpeg


…and then doesn’t have it in my size! Damn you, fickle hand of Destiny! :mad:
 
LissaC said:
3AM here and this will be a sleepless night. The shower head on the bathroom of the upstairs house broke (according to the neighbor, "exploded" would be the right word) so now it's literally raining inside my house 😔
Click to expand...
I feel for you.

But you also brought a smile to my face as I remembered something similar that happened years and years ago, when my little sister was 2 years old. Myself and a friend had driven up to an old stone farmhouse holiday home in the heart of the lake district and I'd taken both my baby brother and my little sister with us.

I'd lift the fire, fed both kids, put both kids to bed and then trekked back down the track in the dark in an awful night of gales and rain to find the cockstop in a flooded hole in the ground, stripped off above the waist and literally lain on the ground to reach into this water filled hole to turn on the water supply, trekked back up (about a mile each way) and changed into dry clothes. Until that point we'd been using water in the header tanks and boiler but once the fire was lit and going, we needed to get the water turned back on. I had been delaying it as long as possible going it would at least stop raining.

Later, my friend and I had cleaned up and were sitting around the fire when my sister came down the stairs to complain that it was raining inside the bedroom. I didn't take much notice, but told her firmly to go back to bed. She knew my rules and was pretty well behaved for myself and my friend (different story with our parents mind you) so I was a touch surprised when about half an hour later I heard her walking along the corridor and creeping down the stairs. This time I was angry. I was cold, tired and not in the mood.

I got up telling her she had better be telling me the truth... she was wet through but that was nothing new, she was a bedwetter back then, so I'd expected it to be just that. But her comfort blanket was also wet which was not normal and it didn't smell like pee. As it was to turn out, she was telling the truth from a 2 year old's point of view. It was indeed raining in her bedroom. And raining quite heavily. A quick look at the ceiling confirmed the problem and she was duely wrapped up in a towel, clean dry clothes grabbed and taken downstairs to sit in front of the fire and handed to my friend. My night was about to get much longer.

Cutting a long story short, something in the plumbing department had gone wrong. A quick climb into the roof confirmed that it was also raining in the roof even though by now it was no longer raining outside. The cause was immediately obvious. The header tank didn't have a cover on it and for whatever reason related to this plumbing issue, the header tank itself was at boiling point. (Its meant to feed cold water into the hot water tank system and feed cold water into the backbox on the open fire which also heated water). Instead of being cold, it was merrily boiling away, the water vapour hitting the cold slate roof in the middle of February storms and doing what hot water vapour does when it meets cold slates, condensing and dripping onto the ceiling of the floor below.

I did what any teenager (used to life in the country) would do in this situation: I ran a bath for my very cold sister. And it was a BIG bath, full of hot water, enough to empty the hot water tank and header tank. It seemed logical to me that it needed cold water in the header tank and there was only one way that was going to happen quickly before the ceiling came down.

It bought a couple of hours for an emergency plumber to turn up. Thankfully it wasn't the open fire that was faulty but the hot water tank which meant we could keep the fire lit provided we periodically ran the hot water until it went some cold.

Since then, I've learnt to take certain things more literally and it's raining inside is one of those things!

PS, no she doesn't remember thankfully!
 
LissaC said:
3AM here and this will be a sleepless night. The shower head on the bathroom of the upstairs house broke (according to the neighbor, "exploded" would be the right word) so now it's literally raining inside my house 😔
Click to expand...

Yeah, if it is a single knob controller they can "explode." I keep two water shutoff wrenches in my house for emergencies.

CD
 
TastyReuben said:
Look how the Universe mocks me - it puts this kickass shirt in front of me:

View attachment 95611

…and then doesn’t have it in my size! Damn you, fickle hand of Destiny! :mad:
Click to expand...
Wow.

Tell me you're an American without telling me you're an American
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom