Another damn leak!

I find the old photos we took prior to the plastering, documenting where all the pipes and cables are (with measurements). This leak appears to be coming from the joints in the pipes here.

These pipes run from the attic rads above, across the ceiling and down the wall to the rad on the landing here.

🙁

Thanks to the old photos we were able to pinpoint exactly where the pipes were and Andy firstly cut an exploratory hole in the ceiling to try and save going into the precious plaster.

Really annoyingly we couldn’t find the leak so the next thing to do was to make a hole in the lime plaster (ouch).

And boy did it develop! I was awoken early the next morning with a very loud dripping… It was dripping onto the old footstool that I left out, soaking the old floorboards, and bouncing off this onto the wall and skirting too.

I stupidly didn’t put any towels or buckets down overnight just in case it did leak. Thankfully, the oil we had treated the floorboards with last year has worked to protect them from soaking up the water, but I could see quite a pool had gathered underneath the floor!

You can see the two big drips coming from the ceiling. The leak is not coming from these joints at all, it appears to be running along the ceiling plasterboard (which is thick and seemingly water resistant) towards the wall, hence it seeping out through the lime plastered wall yesterday.

Thankfully the floor has not been damaged and is drying out well. Buckets and towels are now collecting any drips.

Colin taking investigative photos inside the ceiling. We could see the culprit, a joint in the middle of the ceiling. You can see the drip in the next photo.

Really annoyingly we had to make more holes in the ceiling, two more in the end as the first one exposed it but Andy couldn’t access the pipes to fix them.

It turned out it was just a push-fit fitting that hadn’t been pushed together properly!!! I am sure you can imagine my language. Considering suing the first incompetent plumber in fact as we are STILL paying to correct his shoddy work. Grrr…

Remember the weird orange stuff I found in the woods that I thought were eggs? Well our very clever scientist cousin, Fiona, has identified it as a slime mould, Red Raspberry slime mould to be precise!

Hands up who has ever seen anything like this before? Definitely not me.

“Red raspberry slime mold (Tubifera ferruginosa) is one of the most commonly encountered slime molds in woodlands. It appears from June through November as a pink to bright red, pillow-shaped, tightly-packed mass on well-rotted logs, sometimes on moss. The surface is knobby, like a raspberry. It is not edible.”

There is also another species that is identical: Tubifera arachnoidea

Cat has purchased literally hundreds of spring flowering bulbs for the garden, Tulips, Narcissi, Alliums, Irises, Muscaris, Snowdrops, Crocuses and Hyacinths from the RHS website and as a result is having a marathon planting session.

Allium bulbs being planted in the Lavender beds.

All arrived in fully compostable packaging 🙂

Colin has spent the day digging the second half of the flower beds in the front garden, edging them with the same slate tiles as before.

Cat has planted more bulbs around the base of our pear tree.

Cat is planning to put a photo of Jasper in this picture frame, so I beat her to it with this which is a very accurate representation of Jasper at the vets. Scooby Dooby Doo!