Sunday 4 October 2015

Weekly Rundown: Without Water!

It's been an interesting week here at Chez Click, starting at 5am on Monday when I went to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, turned on the tap and nothing came out. Being a member of Generation Y, where all life's little problems can be solved by turning something off and back on again, I turned off the tap. I turned it back on again. Still nothing.

That's right.

The water was off. And I'd wasted our one flush of the toilet. Oops.

After wiping the liquid soap off my hand onto a flannel and washing my hands with a wet wipe, I went downstairs to inform the Mr of this news. Luckily he sets up the breakfast stuff the night before, including filling the kettle, so we weren't without our morning cuppa. Even more luckily, his parents are on a totally different water supply to us so we were able to fling on clothes and make a quick dash to use their running water.

It being 5am, we couldn't check with our neighbours if their water was off, but thanks to Facebook we were soon able to confirm that, yes, not only was our little rank of houses off, the big house was too!

Mount Stuart gets its water from a little loch about two or three miles from our house. It's totally different to the water in town. I mean, water's water, but then it's not. The water that comes out of our tap is softer somehow; it tastes soft and a little bit sweet, not chemically at all. Of course, when you run a bath after heavy rain it has a slight greenish tinge, but the smell of it is lovely; sometimes I don't even bother with bubble bath.

And aside from being nice to drink, and sniff, it's handy for other day to day things. Like washing up, doing laundry, and showering, all of which pretty much ground to a halt without our usual supply of the wet stuff.

Mount Stuart were very helpful, of course. We came home on Monday to a big pack of bottled water with a letter telling us what was going on (namely that the water supply should be back that evening), which was followed up with another letter a few hours later which basically said 'um, actually, looks like it's going to be tomorrow'.

Tuesday brought more bottled water and an arrangement that we could go take showers at a local hotel, should we feel that way inclined. I'm not sure how many residents took them up on that offer. I'd made a point of stopping in at my in-laws' for a shower on the way home on Monday (I'm possibly the world record holder for quick showers, Mr Click once timed me and I did it in ninety seconds – this is a skill I learned back before Sky+ was a thing, so I could nip in for a shower in the advert breaks of TV programmes).

When we got in on Tuesday evening the first thing I did was headed for the kitchen and turned on the tap, this had become a habit whenever we got in or moved, just in case it had come back on since we last checked. Imagine my delight when, after coughing and sputtering for a moment, actual water came out the tap. Sure, it was murky coloured and obviously undrinkable, but it was water. I actually took a glass of it out to the car to show Mr Click!

Never have I been so glad to see a glass of murky water.
As of yesterday the water has pretty much returned to normal, after a couple of days of being first murky and then cloudy. It's like our epic five-day power cut that I blogged about three and a half years ago when this blog was just a baby. It's not something I'd like to do again any time soon, but we survived. And I'm pretty grateful for our running water.


Now if I could just get caught up on this backlog of laundry!

8 comments:

  1. Interesting to read where your water comes from - you have a close relationship with it. Terrible thing to do without, I remember having to go round to a friend's for showers when our boiler went a few years ago, but at least we still had cold water to drink - and flush. Glad it was sorted reasonably quickly, and they seem to have kept you well informed.
    Anabel's Travel Blog

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    1. At some point I'll have to get a photo of it, normally I zoom past it in the car. For the most of the island the water comes from a loch in the centre, so even before we moved here I was very aware of where it came from. It's quite nice to know exactly where it's coming from when you turn on the tap.

      I can get by without electricity pretty well. I've had practice of that. I think I could cope with no boiler, but no water at all takes some getting used to.

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  2. Bieng without water is a real pain. Our hot water heater stopped working last month and it was on a Thursday and they apartment manager said she had to order a new one and it wouldn't be here until the weekend. It turned out that she refuses to work on the weekend so we had to wait until Monday to get running water again.

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    1. I can imagine how frustrating that would be.

      A weekend without water would be both a blessing and a curse. I'd not have been too worried about showering and stuff for work, but being in the house all the time would mean using the toilet a lot more; at least being during the week we were out of the house for most of it.

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  3. Hate it when the water goes out without warning. Usually we get a notice that the water will be off to fix a leak or something, but sometimes things happen. Yes, we're spoiled, but we should have water when we turn on that tap!

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    1. Yeah, normally we'll get a letter to tell us if the electricity, water or whatever will be off. This was a problem with the filtration system or something, then there was an airlock that they couldn't shift so it was completely unplanned.

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  4. Our water is soft and sweet too, love it. Saves soap etc as well, you don't need much for washing with this soft water! But glad you got yours back, it's a pain with no running water...

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    1. I know what you mean about saving soap. I remember when we went to North Yorkshire, it seemed like you had to use half a bottle of shampoo to get up a lather. When I came back I kept on ending up covered in bubbles because I'd forgotten that I didn't need to use as much!

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Let me know what you think. :-)