In the afternoon of the day before our trip to Manchester, I tried to fill the kitchen sink so that I could wash the pots from lunchtime. I noticed that the water was only tepid and thought that perhaps the hot water had been used up earlier in the day. There wasn’t time to turn the water on and heat it up because I was due to go out. It wasn’t a problem, I could wash them when I got home or so I thought at the time. However when I got home Mr C was sitting at his computer booking a gas service call. The water pump had failed. As we we had already booked train tickets for our Manchester adventure, the call had to be booked for Saturday. This meant no hot water for two days!

Mr C chose the 10-13.30 slot because we had visitors coming for an evening meal on Saturday evening and there were jobs that needed to be done after he left. At 11am the engineer had still not arrived and I suggested we ring British Gas. Mr C thought they would arrive soon so he decided not to ring straight away. When, a little later it became clear that they would not arrive before 12 o’clock he dialled British Gas and was put on hold in a queue for 25 minutes. Eventually someone took the call and we were advised that had been a lot of problem calls in the area and that the engineer would be with us between 12 o’clock and 6pm. Mr C told them that this was not good enough and that we had plans later in the day. After a bit of toing a froing between the call centre and the engineer the revised time remained before 6pm. Mr C was asked if this was acceptable to which he said ‘no but it will have to do’.

The engineer turned up at 2.15pm and confirmed it was the water pump that had broken. He then encountered a problem getting the old one off, it had apparently been soldered on. He then encountered another problem when he started to fit the new one. He was with us for nearly two hours! When he was gone we had to rush around doing the household jobs that we couldn’t do whilst he was there. If we had known he wasn’t coming in the morning some of them could have been done then! We just managed to get everything ready in time for our guests arrival at 7pm.

The new water pump doesn’t look as sturdy as the old one but at least the water is ‘very hot’ now. I think the old one had been on the blink for a while.

After checking our system this morning the engineer declared the system was working perfectly and that it was operator failure our thermostat was set too low. I wondered about this diagnosis as I originally thought that was the problem too. After we had our new door fitted Mr C had turned the thermostat down a degree because the house seemed hot. I think this was because the actuator was running on after the thermostat said the heating should shut down keeping the house hotter than it should have been.

After the new actuator was fitted a couple of weeks ago we noticed that the downstairs of the house felt rather cool. Before Mr C called out an engineer I turned up the thermostat up a degree to where it had originally been, but I wasn’t convinced there was much of difference in temperature downstairs.

When I got home from work this evening the house seemed warm enough but I was cooking dinner rather than sitting down. Over dinner I noticed the dining room seemed rather on the cool side so I went to check the thermostat. It had been turned down again one degree from where it has always been previously set. I turned it back up again!

For me the jury is out on whether the heating system is really working properly. Mr C had artificially raised the temperature of the house by turning the thermostat up to full this morning just to check if the engineer was really needed after all! I was so overheated on the upper floor of our house whilst getting ready for work that I had to open the window to cool off. I enjoyed the wintery blasts more than the heat within!

The second engineer (electrician) arrived and sorted out the plug socket that had been identified as not being earthed. So now I can dry my hair in complete safety, without the chance of ending up with an Afro Frizz.

After all these adventures we were able to book a few days away at Colwall Park for our anniversary. We tried to get the same room we stayed in last time but it was not available that week, leaving us to choose another to enjoy, which is probably for the best

Our heating system hasn’t been right since it was drained after a radiator pipe was broken whilst our ‘smallest room in the house‘ was being refitted in December last year. After the refit our heating system was full of air; the radiators required bleeding for several weeks and some rooms were cooler than they should be.

Even before the refit the heating system had been noisy for some time which finally resulted in the system failing (again), the heat was permanently on although the timer was off. We called out the engineer who identified the problem within a few minutes and fixed it. It is a part of our heating system that fails regularly.

We thought that was the end of all the problems until the weather turned chilly a couple of days ago. The downstairs of the house (which is usually warmer than upstairs) was distinctly chilly. When I touched the radiators they were cold at the bottom which made me think that there is an airlock or limescale debris restricting the free flow of water. An engineer has been called out to investigate on Monday. At the same time an electrician will come and fix the plug socket that had been identified as not being earthed during the last engineer visit.

Apart from that I had a relaxing couple of hours in the hairdressers followed by a delicious evening meal