My Upside Down Heating System
My heating system is proving a nightmare to get right. On Friday the plumber found that instead of having the normally closed actuators on the valves with an M30 thread, they are normally open ones with an M28 thread.
Obviously, the originals fell of the back of a lorry somewhere in foreign parts, but they are totally incompatible with a modern heating control system. One supplier said that they were probably specially made, so they could charge a fortune for replacements.
The outcome is that there is little or no control of the temperature of the floors in my house. They seem to remain stone cold all the time.
Although, you can get some heat into them at odd times, but I suspect that is because the sun warms the room above the temperature set on the controls. This opens the valve and it gets even hotter, when it should switch the system off.
Was this why I collapsed in the heat and ended up in hospital? The doctors don’t think so, but I’m not going to let the house repeat its attempt to kill me!
The more I find out about this house, the more I come to the conclusion, that the architect had a few good ideas, but was very short on detail and calculations, the house was built by Jerry and he used a heating engineer, who used components with a very dodgy history. But then the name of company who developed the site was called Back Street Developments. They seem to have taken the money from those who bought the houses and run, as there is no trace of the company or an NHBRC Warranty.
I’m going to change the manifolds and actuators to the standard that every other system uses.
Are Smoke Detectors Worth It?
For the last three days, I’ve been living with the constant beep of a smoke detector every few seconds.
I thought, I only had three smoke detectors; one in the kitchen, one in my bedroom and one in the boiler room. I check them regularly and know the beep when they need a new battery. Not that that would have helped, as I have none of the standby batteries needed, as if I do need one, I just get one from the 25 hour a day convenience store round the corner.
The builders, who put in my false ceiling in the hall, made provision for another, as this picture shows.
Provision For A Smoke Detector
But fourteen months after they started, it’s still not finished.
I eventually traced the noise to the smoke detector intended for that ceiling, which some helpful soul had placed in the downstairs bedroom.
The Errant Detector
As I couldn’t be bothered to silence it correctly, I stuffed it under some coats in a drawer.
If I hear it again it goes in a bucket of water! What noise does a drowning smoke detector make?
So how many smoke detectors end up being silenced or removed, because they annoy the house owner or tenant. Incidentally, when I moved in this house, all were beeping like an orchestra of mice. But that’s tenants for you and after having them for ten years this house wasn’t happy.
Smoke detectors as they are designed now are a nightmare. I’m not against them, but they should be independent of any form of changeable battery. I do wonder how many people end up in hospital, trying to put a battery in a smoke detector.
A Chief Fire Officer for Ipswich once told me, that they put smoke detectors in all the Council’s housing stock. But within six months none worked, as the kids had had the batteries for their toys and games machines.
RBS Tries A New Line In Customer Service
I love this story, from the Edinburgh Evening News.
For RBS customers, it’s Christmas.
But obviously, only in Edinburgh!
They would never have tried such a stunt to get new customers in Glasgow!
The Anonymous Widower 