The spout at the back of my house seemed blocked and flooded my next-door neighbour J's garden when it was showing very heavily 2 days ago. The bottom of the spout is buried with the soil, so I removed the soil, but I couldn't find any grate which should lead to a drain. All I could see is a smooth concrete-like stuff under the spout. So, I phoned my landlord (yes, the Karadzic lookalike) for help.
He and his workmate came this afternoon to see the drain. They examined what's under the spout and opened the manhole for drains. And ended up breaking the concrete under the spout with a J's sledge hammer. (Handy to have a builder's widow living next-door.)
Guess what we found? Nothing. Absolutely nothing except for broken bricks, stones and soil. No drain pipe underneath the spout!!! J remembers that there was a grate under the spout when she moved into her house about 50 years ago. But there is no sign of anybody making a grate and laid a drain pipe. Our conclusion was "The builders were too lazy to lay a drain pipe for the spout, and they hid their laziness with a fake stuff under the spout. And nobody had noticed this shoddy work until today!!!
Anyway, my landlord told me that he would get a pipe and sort this out in a week or so. Lucky that he is a tradesman who can do loads of building work by himself.
One more thing. My landlord and his workmate were impressed with my herbs and tomato plants. Well, it's not me who didanything good for those plants, but it's plants themselves actually.
I'm more interesting in your landload's face than the spout..(sorry!) But he is a nice man, isnt he?
ReplyDeleteYeah, he is nice. I hear many bad words about landlords/ladies, but I can't complain about mine.
ReplyDeleteHave you watched a BBC documentary about a N Irish man running an orphanage in Philippine? The man is my landlord's big brother. He is tall and thin, but if you squash him a bit (in your mind, of course) and make him younger, he would look like my landlord:) Pity I can't show you any picture.