friends, today i need your solid advice, normally i am the one who is dishing out all bullshit now its your turn! so don't **** me about I want a proper advice from any fully registered or fully unregistered plumber! 
The story is a bit long, but if you are a boring person and want to bypass the story then go to bottom line in bold!
A friend of mine lives alone, and is incapacitated through lung cancer, not only that he is also a terrific hoarder, which means he will not allow any professional personnel into his house, only one of his elderly uncle and I am allowed anywhere near inside his house. (makes me feel very privileged!) and who knows he might be leaving his whole estate to me! I could say worth around a million bucks! ( Don't call me barsteward, I deserve it and I earned it)
His uncle takes him to hospital whilst i look after his things and try and stop them falling over his head if cancer won't kill him, his piles upon piles of hording things right up to the ceiling will!
So now, well well, his stop cock is buried under tons of items he has been hording such that there is no more room for moving things around, and he won't let me move them any way, he starts panicking when I tried helping him move some of the stuff around to make his life a little more comfortable. When he has to go to bathroom, it is a major struggle through no more than 12" wide stairs left for him to climb through, as even the stairs are full of stuff right to the ceiling! He won't let me take photos, his place really is very interesting.
So now that, his kitchen sink tap has started to leak quite badly, so what he has done is he fitted a rubber attachment over the tap spout, and tightened this attachment with a wing nut that it comes with, sort of jubilee clip with a wing nut!
Then this attachment is further threaded on with I am not sure what you call this bloody thing it has two spouts, and each can be turned off with a small leaver, hence he has managed to stop his leaking tap , but this he did when all was well with him, and he had the energy! and he did it sort of as a temporary measure, simply because no one can get to his stop cock! and the under sink there are no ball valves, this house is traditional English house and build when no balls were even invented! so there is no way any one could have fitted on!
So a couple of days ago (last Sunday) when it had been snowing quite bad, his 2nd attachment leaver broke (not because of snow) and the tap started to gush cold water at full force, so he rang me around 8pm (Sun)
He asked me to come over in all that snow! and that he has a spare 2nd attachment but he hasn't got any more energy to change it as he can hardly stand! due to his medical condition
Now now, wait please , I will eventually come to the bottom, Now i said to him there is a thing called pipe freeze, I have never used it, but I am not sure if anyone has, is it any good and if so is it very costly, and how long before I could open his tap and change his washer, I have not seen the type of tap fitted to his kitchen sink, so I will take its picture and post it here, the next time i go up to him, I suggested to him yo call Thames Water but he is scared of them because of his hording.
He obviously now wants a permanent solution just in case this one also fails, secondly, I also had to tie loads of steel wire around the rubber fitting to stop it sliding off despite the wind nut being fully tightened and I am no plumber, so i don't have the long reach key that I could turn the water off from the street myself! Pipe Freeze is what i am looking at for now!
The story is a bit long, but if you are a boring person and want to bypass the story then go to bottom line in bold!
A friend of mine lives alone, and is incapacitated through lung cancer,
not only that he is also a terrific hoarder, which means he will not allow any professional personnel into his house, only one of his elderly uncle and I am allowed anywhere near inside his house. (makes me feel very privileged!) and who knows he might be leaving his whole estate to me! I could say worth around a million bucks! ( Don't call me barsteward, I deserve it and I earned it) His uncle takes him to hospital whilst i look after his things and try and stop them falling over his head if cancer won't kill him, his piles upon piles of hording things right up to the ceiling will!
So now, well well, his stop cock is buried under tons of items he has been hording such that there is no more room for moving things around, and he won't let me move them any way, he starts panicking when I tried helping him move some of the stuff around to make his life a little more comfortable. When he has to go to bathroom, it is a major struggle through no more than 12" wide stairs left for him to climb through, as even the stairs are full of stuff right to the ceiling! He won't let me take photos, his place really is very interesting.
So now that, his kitchen sink tap has started to leak quite badly, so what he has done is he fitted a rubber attachment over the tap spout, and tightened this attachment with a wing nut that it comes with, sort of jubilee clip with a wing nut!
Then this attachment is further threaded on with I am not sure what you call this bloody thing it has two spouts, and each can be turned off with a small leaver, hence he has managed to stop his leaking tap , but this he did when all was well with him, and he had the energy! and he did it sort of as a temporary measure, simply because no one can get to his stop cock! and the under sink there are no ball valves, this house is traditional English house and build when no balls were even invented! so there is no way any one could have fitted on!
So a couple of days ago (last Sunday) when it had been snowing quite bad, his 2nd attachment leaver broke (not because of snow) and the tap started to gush cold water at full force, so he rang me around 8pm (Sun)
He asked me to come over in all that snow! and that he has a spare 2nd attachment but he hasn't got any more energy to change it as he can hardly stand! due to his medical condition
Now now, wait please , I will eventually come to the bottom, Now i said to him there is a thing called pipe freeze, I have never used it, but I am not sure if anyone has, is it any good and if so is it very costly, and how long before I could open his tap and change his washer, I have not seen the type of tap fitted to his kitchen sink, so I will take its picture and post it here, the next time i go up to him, I suggested to him yo call Thames Water but he is scared of them because of his hording.
He obviously now wants a permanent solution just in case this one also fails, secondly, I also had to tie loads of steel wire around the rubber fitting to stop it sliding off despite the wind nut being fully tightened and I am no plumber, so i don't have the long reach key that I could turn the water off from the street myself! Pipe Freeze is what i am looking at for now!
