Back in May, my bathroom light stopped working. The light itself worked fine, but (almost) every time I pulled the cord to turn it off, the lighting ring main for the whole flat tripped as well. Cue a call to the landlord who sent round the electrician who replaced the pullcord and the light fitting. Everything worked fine after that, although the extractor fan would sometimes turn off straight away with the light, rather than staying on for another minute or two like it should do, but I didn’t really consider that a problem.
And then I got back from a few days away at the end of July, turned on the bathroom light and the extractor fan just started making a clicking noise. What’s worse is that the pullcord then stopped working so I couldn’t check whether the extractor fan was a one-off or whether it was actually broken. Fortunately the light was off when the pullcord stopped (I mentioned showering in the dark in my recent post). I duly called out the electrician again and he replaced the pullcord again.
The extractor fan was working when he left (I don’t know if he actually did anything or it just happened to be working when he was there), but over the next couple of weeks it was very temperamental – sometimes it would turn on fine, sometimes it would turn on fine but then randomly stop for a second or two every now and then, sometimes it would just make a clicking noise, and sometimes it wouldn’t do anything at all. I decided that I could probably live with this and it would probably all work fine again when the electrician came. Then last Saturday I noticed this happening when I turned off the light:
It’s not the best quality video (blame the autofocus), but essentially after pulling the cord, the light flickers for about 10 seconds before eventually deciding to turn off. Strange, but again, it didn’t seem quite worth the hassle of getting the electrician out. That video was filmed at about 10pm on the Saturday evening as I went to bed. Three hours later I woke up to a light coming in under my bedroom door. Going to the bathroom I found the light doing this:
If it’s not clear, the light switch was turned off and yet the light somehow has power and is flickering (quite brightly)! I turned off the lighting ring main at the trip switch and went to bed, making a mental note to contact the landlord on the Monday.
On the Sunday evening I was sat watching TV and I could hear a dripping noise. The cold water tank sometimes drips, but this was louder and more frequent so I went to check it out. And then I found water coming in through and around the light switch pullcord and the shower pullcord.
I instantly turned off the lighting and shower ring mains (I had turned the lighting back on so that I could have lights in the other rooms of the house). I then went up to my upstairs neighbour and informed them of the leak.
Skip forward a few steps and their plumber came round on Monday morning and apparently found a problem with the waste pipe from their bath. It does seem like there must have been some underlying reason behind all these problems over the last couple of months, so hopefully that was it and it’s now hopefully sorted.
The electrician then came to my flat yesterday afternoon but found that the wiring was still too wet to safely to turn it back on. Apparently they will need to replace both pullcords (again!) and the light fitting (again!). Hopefully he will be coming back tomorrow to do the work, but until that happens I’m sat in the dark and unable to have a proper shower.