Richie the plumber has been in the laundry room for two and a half hours already and he's not finished yet. He has replaced the main water inlet pipe (dead valve) and repaired a pinhole in the feeder pipe to the ground floor loo, and he wants to do something (I'm not sure what) to all three toilets. I can hear the Shop-Vac whirring now, after rather a lot of pipe-cutter racket and whoosh of welding torch. This is gonna be expensive.

All this arose from my discovery about ten days ago of water on the floor around the dryer and a fine spray apparently coming from the top of the water softener.

When Richie came to deal with the fine spray, he found that the valves on the main pipe were jammed and the pipe itself a dead loss. That meant summoning a city crew to shut off the water outside, and then the major surgery under way now.

I guess I should be grateful this didn't happen in January, when the outside shut-off valve will be under Lord alone knows how much snow.