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New tech, and Tessa update
Woot, new shower! The one I use, in the guest bathroom (because Greg has the one in ours set to hot, hotter, and hottest), had got so temperamental it took me up to five unites of turning and wiggling the mixer to get the temperature right, and I finally got so fed up, I called the local plumber. He came today, and I now have:
- a new mixer that will adjust the temperature and the flow;
- a slider bar so I can have the shower rose at any height;
- a detachable Satinjet shower rose (the Futura model) that will do a soft wide shower or a concentrated massage one -- and it uses 40% less water.
And for those wondering how Tessa is, she's happy, warm, and pampered (except when we're trying to pill her) and her eye seems to be doing fine. It has a reddish bit in the outer corner which is the corneal graft, but I believe that will turn white. She doesn't mind the eye treatments I'm giving her, and as for the usual battle to get pills down her, I have only just learned that if you pull a cat's head back far enough, their mouths open. Something new each day!
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I'm glad Tessa is getting better, my fingers are still crossed for her.
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Glad to hear that Tessa is recovering.
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Tessa is doing well (she's on my lap right now) and I'm sure her eye is too. :-)
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And a new posh shower, luxury. As someone who grew up with a tin bath being brought into the kitchen once a week, I still don't take plumbing for granted.
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Blimey! I thought that died out in the 20s! Where did you grow up?
This house was built in the 70s by a young couple and I think they cut a lot of corners; the toilet and bathroom fittings were all a lot older than the house. One of the first things we did was install a proper push-button flush instead of the handle people had to turn which only worked if you had the knack; so embarrassing for visitors. I think they got a job lot of second hand stuff, and they did things like not paint the floor under the kitchen and laundry appliances, nor bother tiling behind the oven which we only found out when we got a lower model. :-(
I've always lusted after a decent shower, and now I've got about the best you can have with unequal pressure and an old hot water cylinder. :-) The only thing that could improve it would be mains pressure water so we can run taps while the other one's showering.
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Glad Tessa is doing well x
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She is, though she's not very happy right now because she just had her pills.
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We didn't get internal sanitation until about 1960. I grew up in Smethwick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smethwick) in a terraced house (http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/terracedhouse) The tin bath hung on the back of the coal shed door and was brought into the kitchen on Saturday evenings. When I was small the water for a bath was heated in a galvanised bucket on the stove, later when twin tub washing machines became available (Dad was in the forefront of technological advance in those days) water was heated in that and so could be pumped into the bath. It still had to be bailed with a saucepan to empty it.
Council grants became available at the end of the 50's to pay for the instillation of internal sanitation so the whole terrace applied so that we all would have one long period of disruption instead of many short ones. The outside toilet and the coal sheds were knocked though to for one room beyond the kitchen where we had a bath, wash basin and toilet. Mum had an airing cupboard for the first time and hot water was piped through to the kitchen as well. We had never had a hot tap in the house before that.
You youngsters don't know you're living. You never had to have a little paraffin lamp (a tilly lamp) alight under the toilet cistern all winter to prevent it freezing. And there may be others on your flist in the same position.
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It was a Victorian house, so we only had a cold tap in the kitchen. If you wanted hot water you boiled a kettle. It didn't seem strange or deprived at the time , all the houses in the area were like that, just like early Coronation Street
My grandmother still didn't have electricity at that time. She had gas lights and did her washing with a dolly in a barrel and had a mangle. When the Council rehoused her into a council flat in the late 50's she could have a TV for the first time. And she had a bathroom, we used to take soap and towels with us when we went for our weekly visit.
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I wasn't allowed to do that, you could get your fingers trapped. I was allowed to swing the handle.
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You know, I often think about what about our lives will strike future generations as a terrible hardship.
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But I console myself that it's cheaper and less effort than carting everything to the laundry, and easier than using a copper and a mangle.
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I suspect my shower is supposed to do all kinds of fancy things, but I didn't inherit an instruction book, and when I've tried fiddling with the numerous dials very little happened. The basic shower works, so I think I'll leave it as it is until I run out of other things to do.
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This shower just has the mixer (pull the lever out and turn) plus two buttons on the head for spray or massage jet; pretty simple. I shall enjoy trying it out in the morning.
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The shower sounds lovely :) Ours is adequate - one good, low-tech feature is a header tank that acts as a buffer for the cold water, so that if someone runs a cold tap, the showerer doesn't get scalded.
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See, that puts you way out in front of us. If someone's showering, the other person can't run a tap, and that's a right pain in the morning when we're both getting ready for work. :-(
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I've never owned a proper shower since I left home, so I feel your pleasure :0) Still, next month I should have one, I can't wait :0)
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It's just that everyone I stayed with over in the UK had a nice shower with a slider. :-) Oh yeah, and double glazing and central heating, both of them unknown here.
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I'm still getting used to my shower, so it took awhile last night to conclude that the reason there wasn't any hot water was that the hot water heater pilot light had gone out again, necessitating a terrifying trip down to the terrifying basement to stick a gas firelighter into the terrifying hot water heater (which fortunately has the instructions printed on the front so I didn't blow up the house).
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Eep. Is your shower gas-heated on demand like the ones in the UK, or is all the hot water heated by a furnace? Furnaces are unknown here (we have electrical hot water cylinders) and basements are very uncommon. In one student flat though, we had an ancient califont (sp?) which heated bath water on demand, but if the flow wasn't high enough, it would turn to steam. I lived in fear of the thing blowing up, and every time a fire engine went past the uni, I wondered if it had. That house has now been demolished, but by uni expansion, not an explosion.
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In the US, the usual arrangement is to have a hot water heater separate from the furnace, so you can turn the furnace off when it's warm. I asked the plumber about demand heaters but he said it's almost impossible to buy a reliable one over here. I do have an oil furnace for heating the house. Which reminds me, I have to hire someone to pump the water out of the tank before I spend all the money in the world to fill it up with oil again!
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We don't even have central heating here, or only rarely. One house I lived in as a kid had oil radiators which was remarkable, but they were electric too. I blame the English pioneers who thought one only needed heating and decent thick walls in places where it snows.
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My flat doesn't have a shower of any kind, nor is there any form of heating in the bathroom. My landlord's threatened to install central heating both last year and the year before, but nothing's come of it.
I do have one of those plastic showerhead attachments you plug onto the taps, which I use for washing my hair. (The landlord didn't supply that either. I live in fear that it will disintigrate and I'll discover that no one makes them any more.)
Good news that Tessa is improving. I had no trouble in giving Skiffle her pills for cystitis last month. I just gave both cats a little bit of tuna at the same time and they gobbled them down in their hurry to finish first and beg for more. Of course Skiffle's tuna had a pill in it, but she gulped it down in her hurry to beat Diesel. Greed is good !
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They make those plastic shower thingies here. We have one we run from the hand basin to the bath on the few occasions we fancy one (the single bath tap won't take one) but we'll be able to use the new shower now.
My girls hate pills so much, they'll eat around them. They've even been known to go off their beloved tuna after we've mined it with pills.
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Shower luxury...I definitely appreciate that. After spending a week out in the field during basic training in the militia, with no access to shower facilities, the first shower was heaven...and so was a McDonald's...
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I'm glad that Tessa's doing ok - and it sounds like even the treatments part of it isn't too bad. Fingers still crossed for her.
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Tessa is very well-behaved except for when we try to give her pills; then she puts up a hell of a fight. :-( Greg is a lot better at it than me; I'm the eye drop and ointment expert.
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It sounds like Tessa is doing well! Pilling a cat is a practised art form - we have one that needs a daily dose so we have it down pat.
Er if you'd asked I could have told you about the head tilting bit.
Hope she has a full recovery!
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