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!
London Zoo On A Cold And Wet Day
Logic would say that you don’t go to the zoo on a cold, wet and miserable day.
But I’ve just returned from such a trip to a far from empty London Zoo.
A couple of people I met, said that they always went, often with kids on Christmas Eve.
I’ll certainly go again! Even if I did have to go to Carluccio’s afterwards for a warming cup of tea and a nourishing cake.
One advantage of being a Friend of the Zoo, as I am, is that you can get in through a gate that is much closer to the 274 bus stop from Islington.
Gorillas In The Cold And Rain
Even the gorillas were braving the weather.
It just shows what a lot of softies we’ve become! Although, I will admit one or two did prefer to be inside in the warm.
Tigers Must Be Tougher Than We Are!
I popped into the Tiger Territory at the zoo and was half expecting to find that the tigers were fast asleep in the warm somewhere!
But as the pictures show, at least the male tiger; Jae Jae, was showing himself off.
But we mustn’t forget that tigers aren’t averse to water and have regularly been seen in snow in Siberia in wildlife programmes.
On the other hand, these are Sumatran tigers, more used to sun and rain than snow!
It was also rather pleasing to see that there were quite a few visitors. Many seemed to be from overseas. I actually talked to some Germans, Ecuadorians and Chinese, who’d come to London for Christmas.
Some Lively Colobus Monkeys
London Zoo has a group of black and white colobus monkeys.
The weather seemed to have no effect on them. Although, when I took the pictures, there does seem to be blue sky above.
The Penguins Were Being Penguins
What else is there to say about London Zoo’s mainly home-bred show-offs?
Even with the temperature in single-figures they weren’t bothered.
Londoners Are Wimps About Shopping!
This morning I needed a few things at Waitrose, so I did what C and I used to do in Suffolk. I went to the store at the Angel early about an hour after it opened. It was very uncrowded. In Suffolk, half the population would have been there, as they all generally getup early.
But obviously they don’t in London. Coming back, the bus had about five passengers.
Logging In In France
On my recent trip to Bilbao and back, I spent three days in France and on the two mornings in Biarritz, I checked some of my Internet accounts, from a computer in the hotel’s Business Centre.
My major accounts have a system of logins and passwords that are stored in my Mark One brain, which means it is a system that is unbreakable without my being present. Nothing is written down, on or in anything I carry.
However, France with its bizarre keyboard layout, made some of the logins difficult. For instance to login to many accounts, you need to type an e-mail address, but that is not easy, as typing the @ sign is not a simple shift, but a control-alt keystroke.
Sometimes, France can get very annoying in the simplest of things, by going its own sweet way.
The Anonymous Widower 