We’ve been in the Dordogne now for just over three months. It’s been fairly hectic settling in, but we’re getting there. Here’s some of the things we’ve accomplished / done in that time:
Installed a wood-burning stove
Had the roof insulated
Had the ridge tiles replaced
Installed electric radiators in the kitchen and bathroom
A week or so ago I had reason to visit the cave only to find one of the hot water pipes was leaking. I can’t remember why I needed to go down there, but it’s a good job I did.
The piping is all copper so there was nothing I could do to fix it. If I’d wanted to do a hatchet job and tape it up I’d have had to go to Brive-La-Gaillarde for supplies and it would have had to wait until the weekend. Now it wasn’t a huge leak, but you wouldn’t want to leave it.
So, a plumber it had to be. A quick search on Google located Bugeaud et Fils, Hautefort in Hautefort as the closest plombier. In spite o my lack of French they were very accommodating and were able to send someone the following morning shortly after 8 am, soon the issue was rectified. We’ve yet to find out how much it cost us. Unlike the UK, where you (have to wait for ages for a plumber) have to pay at the time, in France everything is done with “la facture” (the invoice). We’ll have to wait and see.
That was a couple of weeks ago. This weekend has seen us back at the plumbing again. In the kitchen we’ve two ‘points’ to take water for the washing machine and the dishwasher. When we were here in June both of these worked, but for some reason one of them has blocked up meaning I had to pull out the dishwasher and swap the water pipes between dishwasher and washing machine depending on the demands of the day.
This time we did take a trip to Brico Depot in Brive-la-Gaillarde to get plumbing supplies, a Y splitter, and also a new gas pipe for the hob. Today has seen everything pulled out in the kitchen again and the splitter connected to both the washing machine and dishwasher. So far the washing machine is humming away so we’ve only to test the dishwasher and all should be good.
The other job completed today was replacing the gas pipe between the valve and the hob. We knew this would have to be done from the surveys we had before we bought the house. Managed to replace the pipe today, and glue the valve back onto the wall, so now we have a working hob again which gives us another option for cooking.
The dishwasher pulled out to allow access to the plumbing.
