A GUNNISLAKE mother of three whose kitchen was devastated as South West Water engineers tried to restore mains water to the village has issued a desperate plea to the water company to repair the damage.

Six weeks after Sandy Croft’s kitchen was flooded and her taps and shower busted by a high pressure jet of water she is still ‘being fobbed off’ by the water company.

‘I must have rung South West Water 30 or 40 times,’ she said. ‘They say they will get back to me, but they don’t. I want people to know what a disgraceful company they are, that they think this is acceptable.’

Water flooded Sandy’s kitchen as SWW tried to fix a three-day water outage back in January. Since then only a trickle of water comes from the taps and the her flood-damaged kitchen remains unrepaired.

Sandy said she was at her ‘wits’ end’ after six weeks of trying to get the water company to repair her kitchen and restore pressure to her taps.

She said the further discovery of the slow leak behind the shower in the upstairs bathroom last week had been ‘the last straw’.

‘South West Water were really good when this first happened,’ she said. ‘They sent someone out at 4am on the Sunday morning when the flood happened, but it turns out that they damaged the stop tap and since then our water supply has been a trickle.

‘You can’t go to the toilet and wash your hands afterwards. It takes me 10-15 minutes to quarter fill the bath and I have three children, a three-year-old, a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old, so that is really causing me problems.’

She explained that the problems had arisen after SWW engineers worked to restore mains water after a leak at Hingston Reservoir left 18,000 households in Gunnislake without a supply over three days in January. The problems started for Sandy and her family when, having finally fixed the leak, the engineers were trying to clear the pipes of airlocks.

‘They blasted so much water into my house to clear the airlock that the pressure burst the seals on my taps in my kitchen and in the shower upstairs,’ said Sandy.

‘Six weeks on, I’ve gone from a jetwasher pressure to barely nothing. You can’t flush the toilet then wash your hands, all you get is a trickle from the taps. After weeks of me calling South West Water, they finally sent a plumber out to assess the damage over two weeks ago. He has not returned since and have constantly dripping taps and showers.

‘They eventually came to fix the stop tap they broke last week and that made the pressure worse. I have made six or seven calls since last week, spoke to them on WhatsApp, have been promised a all back and I have heard nothing.’

She added that the final straw had come when she got in from work one night last week, to find water pouring from her kitchen ceiling. ‘After extensive research by my husband, after a long day at work, we found that the shower they broke six weeks ago had been leaking all this time behind the shower unit and has now soaked through my walls, skirtings, floorboards and plasterboards into my kitchen.’

In investigating the leak, her husband had had to lift up the  sodden and mouldy floorboards in the corridor between the bathroom and their bedroom, leaving a hazard in the house.

‘This is the walk of death my three children are expected to take in the middle of the night when they are upset and they want their parents,’ said Sandy. ‘How is my three-year-old supposed to come to me in the night when she is upset? She is going to fall through the floor.’

She said she had not enlisted the support of MP Sheryll Murray.

‘This cannot go on,’ she added.

A spokesperson for South West Water said: ‘We have been working with a customer in Gunnislake who has been experiencing water pressure issues since we repaired a burst water main in the area so that a resolution can be made.

‘We visited the customer yesterday (Thursday, March 17) and will continue to keep in touch with them as we take action to restore their water supply to normal, repair damage and discuss any compensation they may be due.’