This morning at 9:00 AM the man from the Ayuntamiento [town hall] was coming to fit our water meter to get the first of our services going. 9:00 AM turned out to be 9:30 AM , when he turned up, so we were clearly working on Spanish time. 😉
Each block of buildings has a couple of service lockers in the so-called under-build – like a basement. Our town hall man wandered down to the cabinet where all the water connections were located, He opened the door. I think his next utterance constituted something reasonably ripe in Spanish. There are five houses in our block and we are the first inhabitants. Therefore, in the cabinet there are five positions available for water meters to be connected to five sets of plumbing. Were the positions numbered to let anyone know to which of the five houses they related? No, of course not!
Our man instructed me with Spanish hand gestures to open a tap in our house. I did so. He connected the meter to position #1. No water appeared. He disconnected the meter and reconnected it to position #2. He turned the water supply on and this time water appeared. Unfortunately it appeared by squirting a forceful jet out of the cabinet and into our man’s face. More Spanish utterances followed, unsurprisingly. Our man wandered off to another block and appeared to raid a component from it to fit to ours. He tried again. This time no water shot out of the cabinet to hit Mr Townhall in his face but still no water flowed through our open tap.
And so we went on to positions #3 and #4. Now a thought occurred – maybe the supply into our house was somehow turned off? Mr Townhall went searching and eventually beckoned me downstairs to peer into the under-stairs cupboard where the hot water tank was situated. Also located in the cupboard were a stop cock to allow/prevent water flowin ginto the hot tank and also a main stopcock to control water flowing into the whole house. Ah ha! He turned the main stopcock on and we went back outside.
Still no water emerged from our open tap. Undaunted, Mr Townhall kept trying and finally, on the fifth position of the five available, water finally flowed from our kitchen tap. Relief!
Toilet cisterns [2] began filling. Water flowed from other taps and shower heads. At least now, if we were waiting for deliveries, we’d be able to have a pee. 😀
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