A week or so ago, returning from holiday, I found there had been a rather severe water leak in the (new-ish) block of flats where I live. It was an odd, on-and-off, leak and neighbours and building management banded together in a search for its source. Eventually, at half eleven one Sunday night (after an evening of water raining inside the walls), we found it – the bath of an upstairs neighbour, who had only recently moved in, had never been plumbed in. The pipework was all there but hadn’t been connected before the bath panel had been tiled in. She’d reported an odd noise and smell to her landlord but carried on as usual, oblivious to the turmoil below!

While it was annoying, we found the source and repairs are already underway. However the leak and its fallout have set me to wondering if we are as building literate as we would like to think. The lack of even a rudimentary knowledge from my neighbours and building manager of how water might get into a wall, soak a floor, where plumbing might run, to say nothing of not using plug sockets in a wall you can hear water running inside of, I found a little unsettling.

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