Brrrr.

It's been quiet on the blog recently. The cold weather, frozen pipes, frozen water tanks and being busy in work has reducing time for blog posts.

I've become a dab hand balancing on top of a ladder with a hairdryer to get drain pipes back working - it's a pain to have water sitting in the bottom of the bath and sink even when the plugs are out!

I've re-learnt the layout of two B&Q stores to find pipe lagging (hint: if there's none in the plumbing aisle, check out in the building yard as they keep some beside the ladders)

I've learnt that keeping the roofspace trapdoor a little ajar loses heat from the house, but keeps the water tank in the attic from freezing. (When it does, your hot water "runs out" ... more due to the vacuum in the hot water tank that isn't refilling rather than actually running out.)

Which all means that I still hate DIY and plan to hang up my ladders and put my orange bucket away in the new year. Plumbing software in bad enough without having to cope with real pipes and water.