Yesterday we had a water meter fitted. As we are quite frugal with water (for example, during hot weather a lot of our grey water ends up being used to water ornamental plants in the garden), it should save us money and will also provide a way of measuring just how much we do use.

However, this morning we discovered that our shower wouldn’t turn off. I suspect the fitting of the meter led to an air lock in the system which, in turn, has caused some crud to get stuck inside the shower mechanism. The engineer who fitted the meter had me run the water while he turned the valve down to check that it was only our house and not our neighbours who were linked to it (these things are never clearly documented). In hindsight, he should then probably have turned it back on full and got me to shut off the internal stopcock before turning it off fully outside.

What is more, we realised this morning that the shower does not have its own stopcock to isolate it from the mains water supply (someone skipped that page of the manual when they installed it) so we have to leave the whole house supply turned off. Fortunately our friendly plumber should be able to take a look later and fix it tomorrow.