To heat or not to heat? That is the question!

Published on 2 November 2007 in , , ,

I feel like I must have done something horribly bad to my central heating, because it clearly doesn’t like me this year.

Let me set the scene. After having had oodles of repairs done earlier in the year, a few weeks ago I turned the heating on hoping it would just work. And lo, did it heat. It heated the heating unit, and not the rest of the house. It’s a warm air unit and the fan wasn’t circulating the heated air.

So I phoned British Gas cos we’ve got one of those agreement thingies. Bloke comes out and says we need a new fan. Next day he turns up with a fan. Plumbs fan in, tries to get it to work but some wiring has burnt out.

Fine says he. Will have to get some more wiring. Will pop back tomorrow.

Get a phone message later that day – the part is out of stock, they’ll re-arrange when they get it.

Week later, we’ve heard nothing so I phone up. Oh yes, the part is in stock. We’ll send someone out. Oh first appointment we can do is in a weeks time.

Grr methinks but I arrange it.

So week later I’m sat in the house working from home. Outside Thames Water are digging up the road. Driver comes down, can’t get past a lorry which is temporarily parked there, buggers off. I ring up twice and get a bit annoyed. Re-arrange for the next day and tell the nice person on the end of the phone to make a note that the road is open and that he will be let through.

Catherine had that day off work, so instead of doing nice things, she’s sitting at home waiting for the bloke to come again. She even phones up to leave a message to say “Look, if the road’s blocked, phone me up, we can sort it out”.

Bloke drives up, sees lorry in the road, drives off.

Catherine re-rings again and arranges for them to come this morning – this time in a two hour time slot. Person in call centre very apologetic.

This morning, Catherine’s having to run down the street to stop the engineer driving off into the sunset again.

Anyway, heating is duly fixed and apparently working nicely.

So I get home this evening.

Heating isn’t working. Fan isn’t going round… Air isn’t circulating…

Andrew shouts profanities loudly, then goes in the loft to try and stop the cold water tank from overflowing instead…

Thankfully, after crawling around in a very low, dusty loft, the cold water tank is currently not overflowing. Although whether that remains the case is another matter…