Getting your pipes in a tangle
By Fleur
@Fleura (34709)
United Kingdom
April 25, 2026 2:16am CST
The next issue was with the tap. I chose that for its shape and style and reputable brand and an added bonus was the fact it had a built-in pull-out hose so you can pull it out and use it to rinse around the sink, for example. That seemed like a useful feature and I didn’t really think about exactly how it would work.
When it arrived I found it basically relied on a weight attached to the pipe. Two pipes go into the base of the tap – hot and cold water – then the mixed water comes back out again from the bottom, through a loop of hose, and back into the base again and from there the warm water comes out of the tap in the usual way. A 400g weight (I weighed it) fastens around the loop of hose so when you let go of the pull-out rinsing hose the weight causes it to return to its position, essentially invisible.
This worked beautifully with the new tap just out of the box. Of course it was a different matter once the tap was fitted to the sink and the pipes were in position below along with all the other pipes in close proximity – drainpipes from two bowls and from the dish-washer, the water feed to the dish-washer, and the two inlet water pipes each with an isolation valve. When the rinsing hose was pulled out, the hose with the weight moved upwards and the big lumpy weight got snagged against all the other knobbly things! It was very difficult to get it into a position where it could move freely.
In the end after a lot of discussion and crawling half into the cupboard we managed to get it to do mostly the right thing by attaching the weight part-way up the pipe. The hose can be pulled out a few inches, which is all that’s needed, and the weight then pulls it back into place.
Very few good ideas are ever as simple as they seem once installed in the real world! I guess if we had been starting from scratch installing everything at once, and had thought about how it would all work, we could have made all the other connections in a slightly different place to allow the weight to move freely, but retro-fitting is a different matter!
6 people like this
6 responses
@Ineeddentures (31678)
•
25 Apr
Aye well done on getting there in the end.
It sounds like it was very frustrating.
1 person likes this
@Fleura (34709)
• United Kingdom
27 Apr
@Ineeddentures You're obviously just blessed!
When we first moved here we seemed to be changing light bulbs on an almost weekly basis! And the house has a huge variety of light fittings so we have a whole box of different kinds and sizes of bulbs. Luckily things seem to have settled down again now. Maybe they all just reached the end of their lives at the same time.
1 person likes this
@Ineeddentures (31678)
•
27 Apr
@Fleura
We never have issues or problems like this one lol
I sometimes wonder if we are normal.
In 5 years we have never even had to change a light bulb and our plumbing hasn't even had a washer or seal leak
1 person likes this
@DaddyEvil (173705)
• United States
25 Apr
I'm glad you got it all figured out and everything is working correctly.
There's a reason I don't do my own plumbing or carpentry or whatever else goes wrong in the house. People are trained for that type of stuff. I never was trained for it.
1 person likes this
@Fleura (34709)
• United Kingdom
27 Apr
I see what you're saying, and yes plumbers are trained in the correct way to join pipes, the correct gradients for drainage and all that sort of thing. But when it comes down to dealing with the particular arrangement of pipes and things in any specific house they don't get trained for that, they just have to work it out as best they can, like the rest of us. If they have an advantage it just comes from experience of having seen all sorts of things in all sorts of places!
1 person likes this
@DaddyEvil (173705)
• United States
27 Apr
@Fleura They've also had to fix all kinds of messes that owners can make trying to repair problems themselves instead of hiring a trained professional.
1 person likes this
