Dog with a problem

Val was moving bricks from one side of our ruin to the other, but our dog Samwise kept making things difficult by trying to bite the wheelbarrow wheel.

Then he dropped his ball into the wheelbarrow.

"There it is, throw it for me."

Val ignored it and kept loading the bricks, and Samwise got more and more agitated as his ball disappeared under a pile of bricks.



Eventually Samwise could take it no more, and started moving the bricks to retrieve his ball. Once he had it, he retired to a safe distance and looked repoachfully at those who would not throw his ball, but hid it under brioks.

A constant dripping on a starry night

I woke up early this morning and was reading my e-mail when I became aware of a tapping sound.

On investigating I discovered that it was the geyser valve leaking -- the one we had had replaced 16 months ago. As I noted at the time (29 Jan 2008):

Mobile plumbers came, replaced geyser inlet valve.
400kpa Apex pressure valve R625.78
Total cost R1133.78

I also noticed that the drip tray installed by the same plumbers 2 years previously did not catch the drips, but that the water had leaked into a cupboard and wrecked a lot of stuff. So they came and made the outlet of the drip tray go to the front of the house instead of the back. I still didn't trust them, however, so the cupboard has stood empty for 16 months, with the stuff all over the floor in my study, and down the passage. Just as well, because what wasn't wrecked last time would have been wrecked this time -- files, papers, photographs, CD-R discs and stuff like that.

Are there any fundis out there who know if there is any alternative to these very expensive geyser inlet valves that cost R625 and last for only 16 months before the threads attaching them to the pipe dissolve and water drips into the house? We had to have several replaced over the years, and whether the threads are made of brass or plastic seems to make little difference -- they dissolve and leaks result.