The feeder pipe to the hot water was almost completely blocked with black/green goo. It's very likely the rest of the house pipes look like that.

Yum.

Electrician turned up at 10am to turn off the old system. Around 11am the plumber turned up to drain the old hot water.

That's all done and the gas pipes are half connected. They've gone on a break for lunch.

After a brief chat and look at our water pipes it seems the plumber agrees with me. It's much more likely that the problem with our preasure is caused by the house pipes, not the main pipe.

That'll make it much much cheaper and easier to fix. We'll get a quote before he leaves.

10am still not here.

I had a look under the house trying to figure out how our water works. We have bad water preasure, almost certainly because of old pipes, but I have questions...

The water preasure in the outside tape is excellent. This tape also doesn't effect the preasure of the other taps when it is on. All other cold water taps in the house lose all their preasure when another tape is turned on.

The outside tap has a hose pipe too it. Looking under the house, it looks like it's the only one with this type of pipe. The others all have rusty looking old pipes.

It might turn out that we only have to replace the pipes under the house, not the pipe to the street.

That would rock.

But we'll see. When the plumber turns up.

The hot water system in our house is electric and in the roof. It's old. Every trades person who has been in our roof has come down and said "you really should get that hot water system replaced, it has no flooding tray".

We know it has flooded in the past. That's why our house has a new 90's bathroom instead of a crappy late 60's bathroom.

So today we're getting it replaced.

It turned up a day early yesterday at 7:30 in the morning. It was supposed to turn up today. Normally I would be at the train station at that time of day but I just happened to be lazy for the first time in months and happened to be home. Good for me.

It weighs less than I do.

Rang to confirm the plumber was turning up on Tuesday and not Monday and yes, it's still booked for Tuesday.

That's today.

I dropped the dog at a friend's place because a full day of someone in her backyard would have probably sent her mental.

Still... waiting...