Water, water, everywhere.............. ( well, in the garages )
Sunday, October 5, 2008 @ 11:39 PM
El Presidente and Moi went out early this morning to play Irish Road bowling. As we emerged from the garages ( which are the apartment basement....so to speak ) I asked El presidente if it had been raining. No he said, why ? Well says I, I'm sure there was a lot of water on the floor in the upper part of the garage. There's two levels to our garages and usually any water congregates in the bottom bit, where are car is parked ( of course !! ), but the water I thought I saw was in the top bit. Don't be daft, says El Presidente, it's a beautiful day and it didn't rain last night...........you've got water on the brain !!
OK.
We got back about 2pm and there were three notes stuck on our door saying......................there's a lot of water in the upper garage area.....................not on my brain then, El Presidente !!!
So off he trots to have a look and of course, ..........................there's a lot of water in the upper garage area !!!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch ( our apartment ) the doorbell's ringing and so is the landline AND the mobile to tell me...................................YES, you've guessed it !!..........................there's a lot of water in the upper garage area !!
INSURANCE.................that's why we've got it ................to cope with this sort of emergency...............and it's a 24 hour call out...................AND...............they only speak Spanish ( well, it is Spain after all ).
Of course, we have no real idea where the water is coming from, it could be from any one of about 60 apartments and we don't have access to them unless the owners happen to be here ( which of course, most of them are not ). It could be a burst boiler but from the aroma eminating from the garage area, it is something more sinister.
Out comes the Spanish dictionary.......................and El Presidente rings the Insurance company...............well he tries but obviously they have better things to do on a sunny Sunday afternoon ( don't we all ) than talk to us. Several attempt later, El Presidente gets to talk to a Spanish gentleman who informs him that this is not an emergency and please wait until tomorrow and ring again.
El Presidente decides that it must be his Spanish that's at fault and he hasn't explained the position well enough and dashes off to see if one of our Spanish owners is in.
As luck would have it he was in , so he came down to speak to the Insurance people. Trouble was, they'd all gone for a siesta or something cos they weren't answering the phone again.
MEANWHILE....................the water was getting higher !!........................can't turn it off cos we obviously cannot turn off all the water in the apartments or we'd have a riot !!
The Insurance people answered the phone at the next attempt by El Presidente and our helpful Spanish owner explained ( with a great deal of gesticulation and shouting ) what the problem was.
We were told to send for Pele and Canno who are the Spanish 'unbungers' and 'flusherouters' who have been here before, several times, to clear out our garages when they have flooded ( another story !! ), then send the bill to the Insurers.
Pele and Canno arrived within half an hour and El Presidente went down to meet them.
It turned out that we had a BLOCKAGE in the main waste pipe, you know the dirty water pipe which is also the soil pipe, which is full of s***................................................El Presidente was not amused at the thought of tons of this stuff flowing freely through the garages !!
Anyway, they attached thier big blow/suck pipes and sucked........................and what came out ?????
SOAP POWDER......................BIG SOAP POWDER, sort of concreted together.
( there's a moral in this somewhere!! and I'll look for it tomorrow !! )