Shower Fixing(s)

I've had a plumber round this afternoon to fix a leaky shower. It was a very, very small leak, but it was pretty constant and was enough to cause problems elsewhere. The water had been pooling on the front edge of the bath and was then getting under the sealant between the bath and the wall which wasn't quite as tight as it should have been. This had then leaked down the wall, behind the bath, and had started coming through as a small damp patch on the living room wall.

I think he fixed it. Looked like the whole magic part of the shower had come away from the wall a little, as one of the hidden fixings had come loose. This meant that one of the pipes going into it wasn't as secure as it should have been. So he fixed it back up properly and applied some new sealant round the side of the bath (after first filling it right up to the top). That was actually a job I'd meant to do years ago but never bothered to do as it didn't seem urgent. There's a moral in there somewhere.

He told me that I had a very powerful water supply. I said that yes, I had and that that was a good thing. He agreed but thought it was unusual to find such power in a newish flat such as mine.

Maybe he's right, maybe he's not. I don't really know much about showers and plumbing. When I phoned the plumber this morning I spoke to a lady and she asked me whether it was an electric shower or not. I wasn't really sure. Which was daft because thinking about it a little more, I've used a lot of electric showers in the past and they tend to be notable for one main thing: you have to turn on the electricity before using them. Since I don't have to do that, I could perhaps have made a clever deduction.

But given my shower doesn't have electricity, I'm not really sure how it works. It has a thermostatic feature that keeps the water at a constant temperature and in my head this had always been powered by electrics. So now I don't know how it works and I'm confused, and can only assume that it does indeed run by magic.

Or perhaps, to paraphrase Arthur C Clarke, any sufficiently advanced technology will look like magic to an idiot.