Christmas is coming

We made our Christmas Cake today: it’s baking at the moment, the smell is intoxicating. Maybe that is something to do with the amount of Armagnac on the fruit.

After we saw what Sainsbury were charging for turkeys we went to the local award winning butcher (Uptons of Bassett) yesterday and ordered fresh free range prepared turkey and home cured gammon. The weather has been too warm for it to seem very Christmassy though.

In other news our central heating has now been brought into the 21^st Century with a modern boiler, some new radiators and working thermostatic valves all round the house. The new boiler is wall mounted in the utility room so we’ve been able to put the kitchen bin in the old boiler cupboard. Many of the new radiators are smaller than before, or old radiators have been removed leaving holes in the walls and missing bits of paint and paper.

This picture is the area in our bedroom where the fitter brought the pipes up through the floor to go through the attic and down into the airing cupboard. Typically the walls were not straight so he had to put a bend in the pipes. We had to move the power sockets to make room for the pipes too. This is all repaired now, mostly hidden by a dresser.

Insulation Inspection

The guy came yesterday to survey our insulation.

What a surprise, it's not as inexpensive as they said in the advert as those costs are based on a smaller home, but even so it "should" pay back in about 2 1/2 years.

Mind you it would mean losing most of the storage space in the attic, or extending the joists and re-boarding it. The main saving is from adding to the loft insulation.

Where are we going to put all the junk though?

He said the quote is valid for 6 months, but the small print says 28 days. We'll probably get it done when I'm working again.

The heating is fine now. The heating engineer changed the pump which was sticking "on". Maybe the battery had died in the RC1 too.

WRI & RC1 and British Gas 330 Boiler

I had fun last night with the central heating. It wouldn't turn off! We thought there had been a problem for a few nights as it got very warm, but the weather has been quite cold so it didn't matter too much. But last night it woke me up it was so hot.

I came downstairs and checked the timer. It was off. However the boiler was lit and the pump was running. After some messing around, turning it off and on again (well, it works on computers) and checking the Wireless Thermostat Receiver (WRI) in the airing cupboard I thought that maybe the batteries in the thermostat (RC1) had died or were dying, so I changed them.

All seemed well. 

I ran some tests during the day and it seemed to shut down and start up normally. Then tonight at 11 pm we noticed it was still running again. I checked the timer: it was set to turn off at 11 pm and it appeared to have shut down on the timer, but the boiler was lit and the WRI was reporting it was active. To get it to shut down I turned the boiler off.

I guess tomorrow I'll have to call British Gas :) Lucky I've got a service contract!

Odd that this seemed to have started since the service visit to check the water leak from the boiler. The water leak was apparently due to the condensation drip tray overflowing after the drain pipe froze. However the weather has been too cold for us to notice a problem before now.