Weekend of wierd house problems

A continuation of my recent freaky experiences, now with my apartment.  Well, it can be an apartment take-over advice if you are open to them.

Ever since I moved into my apartment, I had been battling a flushing problem with the toilet throne.  It flushed slowly most of the time, and  could get choked.  My renovation contractor tried to resolve it once, and said that it was choked due to cements.  He removed some of it, but after some time, the problems started again.  So I tried all sorts of methods to get it flushing like a loyal subject to the king of the throne.  Chemicals, compressed air canisters, the good old pump, and even a long spiraling wire specially designed for plumbers.

In the end, my throne ended up in a sorry ugly state.  The chemicals eroded the bottom as I was so engrossed and desperate that I ignored the instructions and left it standing in the throne over night.  There were also scratches from the spiralling wire that I couldn’t remove.  Finally, Mrs and I decided to get a new throne.

On Saturday, the plumbers came with the new throne.  When they removed the old one, we saw a piece of broken tile stuck in the passage hole of the throne!  It was about 10cm in width and that was causing the choke.  How did it ever get in there?  It couldn’t have been flushed down.  It was too big to go through the twisting passage way.  The only way was during the installation of the old throne.  The contruction workers must have deliberately stuck this piece of tile in there.  Damn!

Ok, I have to mention that when such work is in progress, you have to take precautions in making sure that they don’t dirty your place.  The plumbers left dirty hand prints on my newly painted walls.  Double crap!

Once the new throne was installed, it flushed royally.

Sunday morning, the taps flowed slowly.  Water pressure had come down.  In Singapore’s efficiency, our public utilities should resolve this soon.  It’s probably a pump problem.  Off to church then!

We came home in the afternoon, and the water pressure was still low.  A bit disappointed, but have faith.  Come 6pm, Mrs was worried that she couldn’t cook.  I told her to get the water she required to do the cooking before the whole block ran out of water.  She took my advice and ran to own all that she could squeeze out of the taps.

I was more worried about not able to bathe.  I called PUB (Singapore’s public utilities board) up, and was surprised that no one else complained.  Seemed like it was a localised problem.  I wasn’t disappointed by Singapore’s efficiency.  Within half an hour, the technicians came down and did a check.  After removing the water meter, they found the problem to be with the pipes.  Pipes are not owned by them, hence they couldn’t do anything.  But they did contact the Town Council (Singapore’s estate management) to inform them of the problem.  Oh, the water meter was choked too, so they replaced that.

Town Council responded quickly too.  They came, took out the joint with the tap, and there she blows!  It is a localised problem!  Within the joint was this piece of woody kind of stuff.  Almost like a wine bottle cork.  That was what was casuing the choke.

“Did you just move in?”, the plumber asked.

“No… I’ve been staying here for more than a year already.”, I responded.

Both plumbers looked perplexed.  I was curious about how this thing got into the pipes too.  Anyway, after removing that woody piece, water flowed gloriously again.  The plumbers received another call, and they went off to rescue another person without much fanfare.  Two different government departments working seamlessly.  My heroes!

If you take over a new apartment, check those pipes and make sure they flush and flow well.  If you are suspicious of anything, get the professionals in until the problems are solved.  You never know what’s stuck in them.