Central Heating Fail

Over the last few weeks, Simon’s OWL Smart Central Heating thermostat has come under increased pressure as the house has simply not been warm enough and the device seemed (at times) incapable of firing up the boiler.  So, last weekend Simon swapped out the thermostat for the original manual model to see what happened.  Thankfully (for the OWL) the heating also failed to kick in on multiple times with the standard thermostat, so when British Gas came to service the boiler etc on Wednesday, they were rather quickly dispatched onto locating the problem.  It transpires that a valve in the boiler was at fault along with a sensor.  So the boiler believed that it had infact fulfilled the requirement for extra heat to the tank even though this was not the case.  Accordingly this has probably been this way for a LONG time and we will most likely find that the hot water in the taps is now way warmer and that it will last much longer too.  We have definitely complained a LOT over the last couple of years about the fact that you can fill a bath once and then have to wait 20 minutes before could use the shower (while the water heats up again) so *maybe* this will be a challenge of the past 🙂

The OWL is now back online and functional again having been absolved of blame 🙂

We were also advised that the boiler is now well and truly out of service (in the respect of you can no longer buy the boiler and that spare parts are now becoming unavailable) so there is every chance that IF we have problems with it downstream, we might need to replace it 🙁  Also, the boilermate tank in the airing cupboard is a POS and we should be more worried about it than the boiler…. Oh good…

 

Another weekend passes us by…

It is frightening to think that we are ALREADY in the last week of January – seems like just two minutes since the build up to Christmas 🙁

Guess it means we are also well on our way to better sunlight during the daytime and better overall weather (fingers crossed of course)

So, we enjoyed another weekend of not a lot – we went out only twice – once to celebrate Granddad’s birthday on Saturday night and then again to take the boys to their swimming lesson on Sunday morning.

Typically, Oliver is still playing the card of not really listening at the lesson (and with 8 other swimmers with him, there is plenty to be doing other than concentrating on swimming 🙁 ) although Elliot was in his element yesterday – the teacher (Richard was away) had them doing backstroke – Elliot’s favourite and best stroke, so he was leading the way big time.

There was however too many chemicals in the pool as they BOTH came out with red blotches etc that thankfully disappeared after their shower and an hour or so…

Anyway, another week begins and it all starts again…

Today was little different to yesterday…

While we planned on getting out for a few hours, we really struggled with motivation today :-(Itwas raining first thing and then we just kind of got stuck in :-).

We did manage to get out for an hour or so and walked to the park (the boys took their scooters) for a little play and then to grab some Ice-cream and some goodies for the kids for school next week (grapes etc).

By the time we got home, the boys were ready for the xbox (well after school homework and dinner of course).

All in bed before 7:45 in readiness for school tomorrow :-). Olly is presently messing about so something tells us that he will be less keen to get out of bed in the morning…. 🙁 oh joy of joys