Washing Machine Up The Creek, Fancy A Paddle?

And the award for “First Appliance to Break 2010” goes to…Washing Machine! (cue applause and awkward, thank-you ridden acceptance speech!)

I returned from football this afternoon (we drew 2-2, thanks for asking, and yes I scored again!) to find the kitchen strewn with towels and tea-towels as the gf attempted to mop up the gallons of water that had shot out from behind the washing machine. Not being able to turn off the stop cock, which is positioned handily under floorboards, under a carpet by the front door, and thus stopping the water she did the next best thing.

In a clever move, she opened up the back door which managed to deflect the torrent of water outside. God knows what the neighbours would have thought if they’d seen, what would have looked like, the kitchen taking a piss onto our patio!

After getting her brother round to put some brute strength into turning the stop cock off (is stop cock one or two words?), she managed to ‘get a bloke round’ who came and identified the issue as being “probably one of the pipes”, but he was unable to fix there and then (do they ever?), and so we’re left without a washing machine but at least the water was turned back on, just not as tightly as before!

If we’ve learned anything from this situation it’s that doors make great deflectors!!

UPDATE: ‘Bloke’ came round this morning to fix it and turns out that it was just a pipe that had decided to stop working as a pipe, so it’s been replaced (that’ll learn it!) and washing machine is functional once again. Thirty-five quid. Nice! But it does mean that the first line of this post is incorrect as technically it wasn’t the washing machine but something attached to it! Bugger!