Settling in at our Earls Court flat

Today marks the not-particularly-spectacular landmark of being two weeks since I moved into the new flat. Plumbing continues to be a bit of an adventure, but it all seems to be getting resolved pretty quickly (thankfully). At the risk of repeating myself (I don't remember how much I mentioned before), here's the story:

While waiting for the inventory guy to arrive before my move-in, I got a call from the real-estate agent saying "the landlady's coming over ... apparently there's an issue with the plumbing". It turned out there were a few leaks which were dripping water into the ceiling of the flat below ours. The previous tenants in our flat refused to allow the admission of plumbers, so the problem had been going on for months, leading to the basement dwellers being on the verge of suing.

A plumber came in on the first day, and "fixed" the leaks. The next few days, however, Feifei and I noticed how there was a slow trickle of water for hours after we took a shower. I grabbed a ladder, and climbed into the mess of pipes and tanks and knobs that exists in one of our bedroom closets. Sure enough, there's a reservoir which is controlled by a float ball valve which wasn't closing properly, thus causing a constant inflow of water which went out an overflow spout (and, apparently, straight to the basement). So we tied some ropes to force the valve shut and called the landlady to have it fixed. With the valve tied shut, the trickling sound stopped, but then we had to untie the rope after every shower for 15 min so that the various tanks could refill, and then retie the rope when the tanks were ~90% full. The repair looked really straight-forward, but the inflow tap was pretty much rusted solidly in the open position (so we couldn't shut off the water), and the existing valve was pretty much rusted solidly to the pipe.

There's actually a really great illustration of the mechanism (including repair instructions) I discovered this morning: http://www.diyfixit.co.uk/nflash/Plumbing/Ball/ball1.htm

The landlady's first visit led to an acknowledgement that "yeah, that needs to be fixed sometime ... I'm thinking of replacing the whole plumbing system, so let's wait a bit". Fortunately sanity (or perhaps the threat of being sued by the basement dwellers) settled on her, and she brought in a plumber. So now we have a new valve and the tap can be turned on and off. Problem solved! Supposedly there are still other leaks in the flat, but we haven't seen much of them.

Feifei arrived from Toronto at the end of June and brought lousy weather with her. We've had pretty much sub-20deg days ever since, with at least a smattering of rain every day. But it didn't stop her from heading out to the parks and museums, etc. during her first week in London. Sadly, her free time is now over, and she's rejoined the working world. The new job seems to be treating her well and, other than some concerns about being blown up by a car bomb (skimming cnn.com indicates London's recent bombings has made international news), she's generally all smiles.