Symi Property Services
Here are a couple of shots from the village taken the other day. The chairs in the square came from Lefteris Kafeneion and were, I guess, out there for varnishing. The weather is warming up, and so it’s time to change the winter café chairs for the summer ones, hence the work. Having said that, it did rain a little on Wednesday night, but not for long. Not long enough to water the plants as far as I could tell the following day.
You may have been following our water adventures through the winter. They started with the sterna being infiltrated by tree roots and thus put out of action – it still is. The tree has gone now, but the sterna won’t be fixed until later in the year, if at all. Instead, we have a water tank on the bathroom roof into which Symi Property Services (SPS) put the pump, so we also had water that came out of taps. Very handy. Then we had a leak from the hot water tank which SPS came and dealt with immediately, but we still need a new tank at some point; it’s fine for now. The replumbing meant that we no longer have to go through the process of turning off this feed and that tap when we want to fill the tank; it happens automatedly now, but it also means that we can’t water the garden unless the town hall supply is on. It hasn’t been on for days now thanks to Easter and bank holidays. Hopefully, we’re topping up our tank again this morning.
There was (and stil is) also the kitchen hot tap which, when the sterna went ballcock over header tank stopped working properly. It’s still up the creek but paddling a little. Turn it on, and if you get the turn just right, water trickles, but by the time it’s run warm, it’s given up the Flying Dutchman (a ghost related to water), and the trickle had dried up. It doesn’t ‘refill’ again for at least an hour. I reckon – and I’ve never plumbed the depths of plumbing – that when the sterna levels were low, the pump dragged up some muck which got into a pipe and caused an 80% blockage. I am guessing at the amount of blockage, of course. So, when the tap runs, we only get the water that’s on the tap side of the block, and when that runs out, the water above the blockage doesn’t have room to flow but drips through, eventually filling the pipe below, which is all we get. Just a theory, but one which needs an expert to sort out. Meanwhile, we boil the kettle of fill the washing up bowl from the shower. I expect the cold water to come out warm soon as the tank is in full sunlight. That’s another for the list for an expert when we get around to it.
Oh, and there was also the time a workman in the empty flat downstairs did some ‘work’ and buggered off leaving the kitchen taps spurting and the shower ‘unturnoffable’. Our tank was draining away until I managed to get in downstairs, see the problem, run black up to our house and unplug the pump to save our rapidly draining water supply. Of course, I rang SPS, and they were here within the hour and isolated the downstairs supply. The workman hasn’t been back since, so it was a good job I was able to get in and had someone I could call on to deal with someone else’s errors. If you have a house on Symi that needs maintenance or management, head over to Symi Property Services.
