Precious water

Well, for the past week, we have discovered just how precious running water is. Our downstairs neighbour began complaining of a damp patch below our kitchen in early December, so we informed our landlord who got plumbers in to look at it. Indeed, there was a leak but it was hard to see where it was coming from. A few more visits over the coming weeks, but no solutions.
Finally, on Friday (30th Dec), after repeated calls from us and from our neighbour, the plumber turned up to find the source of the leak. He began by digging into the wall below the kitchen sink, and then proceeded to the tiles in the kitchen. Luckily, the leak was easy to find and so the damage limited. Unfortunately, the leak was in a pipe connected to the mains, so the plumber turned off our connection to the mains water.
On Saturday morning the plumber turned up again to put in a small hose under the sink so that we could access mains water via a tap. However, with the mains still disconnected from the kitchen sink, washing machine, and from the water tanks up in our loft (which feeds the bathroom and toilet), we had a few issues. But the plumber promised he'd be back on Monday morning...
Monday came and went with no plumber. We had to re-fill our two 227-litre tanks in the loft by filling our plastic bin with water from the hose under the sink by hand in order to keep using the toilet and shower. But, boy, does the toilet use water! A lot. So we avoided taking showers as much as we could. Several hours of re-filling the tanks each day was not our idea of fun!
Tuesday came and went also. By this time we were getting extremely frustrated! After harassing the landlord about it all day Wednesday, FINALLY the plumber arrived shortly before lunch to fix the pipe and re-connect the mains (and the washing machine!).
However, the problem didn't stop there. Apparently the tanks up in the loft are not clean, and some of the sediment that is at the bottom of them found its way into the hot water pipe. So we now have trickling hot water, and sometimes none. The landlord has promised to get the plumber to look at it today, but in the meantime, we will be filling the bath with hot water from the kettle!
Oh, the dramas! When this is all fixed we will certainly appreciate our running water a lot more than we have done in the past....!