Getting up early is part of the job when you’re a commercial plumber. I get the best (and worst) of both worlds by doing commercial and residential plumbing.
When doing commercial plumbing, you can start as early as you want depending on access to a building and whether there are tenants that live in the building. For residential jobs, work can’t start until 7am due to noise requirements.
This morning, I had an early start because it was a commercial sink. One of my pet hates of plumbing is when other plumbers have plumbed in a sink in a building and haven’t installed an isolation tap to that sink or tenancy.
It means that sometimes the whole building needs to have their water turned off just so that work can be done on that sink.
Today’s job, the commercial sink, was in an office that had to be disconnected and revamped then reconnected. There was no isolation tap to the sink and downstairs was a dental surgery that opened at 8am. We had to get in early to turn off the water supply to the building and install an isolation tap to our sink so that we could continue to work on our sink with the water turned off, while still allowing water to the rest of the building.
It’s an ongoing joke between plumbers that ‘heaven forbid’ the water be turned off to an office for just a moment because workers can’t make their cup of coffee. Council workers and lawyers are the worst to complain. Unfortunately if other plumbers had been more conscientious with their work and installed an isolation tap, there would be no need to disrupt a building’s supply.
Today’s installation was easy. The water was only turned off to the whole building for 15 minutes at 6.20am. If the water meter didn’t turn off (as we have had happen before) it would have been a different story but that can be kept for another blog entry.
