subject: Home Emergency Cover – Don't Have A Moat Around Your Castle! [print this page] Home Emergency Cover Don't Have A Moat Around Your Castle!
One of the most vivid memories I have from my childhood is the impression that every winter was long, cold and depressing. We lived in the Northwest part of the UK where the weather was traditionally colder than it was in the Southern parts of the country. Memories also of ice on the insides of windows and the mad rush after the weekly bath on a Sunday night to the downstairs living room where there was an open fire. Nevertheless, my father always seemed to make sure that his chair was nearest to the firs at all times regardless of whether my two brothers and I needed to get warm or not.
It was common practice in those days before central heating to see my father going round with a plumber's blowlamp warming up the lead pipes that had frozen, especially in the cellar of the house and any pipes exposed outside. I can not remember why they were not lagged at all, unless he had burnt off the lagging in an earlier attempt to defrost the pipes.
Of course, in those days, there were no such things as home emergency cover, where you could just call out a professional tradesman to help you sort out your problems, so you just did whet everyone else did, and you did it yourself!
We like to think that today we have everything covered, either by insurance or by proper precautions. However, we are not always as smart and well prepared as we like to think as I found out one cold morning a couple of years ago.
We had experienced one of those sudden cold snaps that seem to typify today's climate in this country at least. We no longer seem to have the months of sub-zero temperatures that we had in the 1960s for example. So, we still get caught out by these sudden drops in temperature, especially if they are not well predicted by our weather people on the television.
The first signs of trouble began in the morning when the water from the wash basin in the upstairs bathroom was taking ages to disappear. I went downstairs to put the kettle on and prepare something for breakfast. From upstairs I heard troubled voices. Eventually, my eldest daughter came downstairs with a puzzled look on her face. It seems that the waste water in the washbasin was still there. I went up stairs and had a look. I did one of those comical things that we all do in these circumstances and tried to ram a straightened metal coat-hanger down the plughole to try and dislodge whatever was causing the blockage, but to no avail.
Eventually I succumbed and called out the emergency plumber from the call centre using the home emergency cover from our policy. The chap came out very quickly and later that day we got the verdict. Evidently, someone had not turned off the tap in the wash basin last thing at night so there was a slight trickle of water going down the plug. With the freezing temperatures, the water froze in the waste pipe outside before it could travel down the pipe to the ground, thereby building up a lump of ice and blocking the pipe! It had backed up to all the other waste pipes forming a kind of moat.
It just proved that even with our improved lifestyle and preventative measures, we can still be caught out by circumstances.
