NORMAL SERVICE

Got home last night to a phone message that had been left by Scottish Power. It confirmed what had been told to me yesterday afternoon when I called them....Power would be back on by midnight. Bollocks.
Strange thing though... the power was back on and had been on before they made the call!! Hooray - not "Bollocks" then.
Then I saw that the trip switch for the pump that services the overflow chamber for the sceptic tank had gone...... so, back to "Bollocks". Yes, everything was bollocks again, "normal service" had been resumed on planet Hay.
That was it then. No club run for me last night. I had to spend a large part of my evening with my head down a flooded shitty tank again.
I had to bale out the tank by hand (well...."bucket") to get the level below the power socket.
Did that and dried out the socket and plug. Pulled the switch...and it tripped again.
Took the plug apart and checked/changed the fuse and really dried it out with an old cloth...and it tripped again.
Took the pump out of the chamber and looked at it..... other than being covered in a coating of slime/sludge/use your imagination it looked OK. But I fiddled with the level of the float switch and basically exhausted the limit of my small cache of electrical/plumbing knowledge. Plugged it back in ...and it tripped again. So I gave it a kick. Which, if I'm honest, other than hurt my toe and get shit all over my shoes achieved absolutely nothing.

If you cant buy it here...you don't need it.

And then I remembered .... I had a spare pump!! I bought a spare years back in Lidl (Yes - Lidl). It was a sort of cheap as chips "impulse buy". The pump that was buggered cost about £200 and the Lidl one cost about £25. It's not the best in the world...but this was just the emergency I must have anticipated.

And it's working a treat (sort of).... Sadly the hose that goes from the pump to the outlet is pretty small. The pump attachment on the old pump was on the top and on this one its on the bottom. It wasn't long enough......
... so, for the time being the pump is suspended about midway in the chamber. Fixed by a bit of nylon rope. Technically it should mean, that for the time being, it switches on twice as often, but only has to pump away half as much each time.

I will shop around for a new bit of hose tomorrow or Friday and sort it at the weekend.

Bloody good scrub with a brush in the shower afterwards and doused myself in aftershave to try and get rid of the smell.

Strange that yesterday was 14 years to the day since we moved into this house. A timely reminder of why I love country living so much.