Lofty beginnings.

Hi all,
Its been a busy week on the house front this week.  We're getting a new central heating boiler on Tuesday as our current one cannot make up its mind whether we want hot or cold water.  Usually whilst taking a shower we get a nice hot blast for a while and then cold for a few minutes when the boiler kicks in but of late the water temperature is ranging from freezing cold to piping hot in minutes, swinging either way.  Eventually the boiler then goes into a hissy fit and cuts out on overheat leaving one recoiling from the torrent of freezing cold water.  Not good when lathered up in shower gel! (sorry for the image that congers up, not pleasant I guess)


The nice British Gas engineers have been out so many times to fix it in the past before and after we moved in they have now washed their hands of it and now refuse to cover it under the gas insurance any more.  We have had no choice but to arrange to replace it with a new modern one.  Hopefully that will sort out the water temperature a lot better.


Should be simple you say, swap it for the new one, job done.   Oh no, not us we don't do simple do we.  Her indoors Chris would prefer to move it to the loft to give us more room in the bathroom (I confess she's right really), which is fair enough except the loft is an absolute mess.  As the bungalow was built in the 1930 somethings, its had a new roof (twice) and a large extension at the back, both of which have deposited large amounts of brick rubble and tile rubble on the polystyrene chippings that serve as lagging, on top of which is a layer of dust and rubble covered modern fibre lagging that is so compressed it is doing no good what so ever.

Now British Gas, bless them, will not fit a boiler in the loft unless there are proper stairs and a proper floor to work, on the grounds of "elfen safetee".  They don't want an engineer putting his/her foot (or his/her whole self for that matter) through the ceiling and neither do we to be fair.  OK so we have the proper stairs and they lead to Jo's my god what a mess loft bedroom, but where the boiler is going to go, on the other side of the bungalow outside Jo's room and though a door in a stud wall there, is no floor .  Ah you guessed it, yours truly has spent the evenings of last week and this week collecting up all the old lagging, brick dust and chippings into bags and then laying new lagging, topping that with chipboard floor panels from B&Q.  Today I built a stud wall for the boiler to be mounted on and cleared the lagging away from where the existing boiler pipes come up into the loft so the fitters can access them.  Not an easy task considering the loft has become somewhat of a major junk store room for stuff that don't fit downstairs and is still boxed from the move. Yes, yes I know we should need sort it and clear it out but we have other priorities for now.   I've had a juggling act to move boxes to clear space as I clear the rafters and lay panels.


One thing that is apparent though is that I make a pretty good impression of Al Jolson blacked up when he sang Mammy.  The dust is as black so I looked like this when I finished. 

No not me but what I looked like when I'd finished.

 Oh yes, hands up who remembers Al Jolson then? ...............................  Come on own up :-)...................................
I seem to recall listening to him round my grandparents when I was a kid.

Well I'm showered, just, and now enjoying a nice glass of cider or three before we enjoy a meal at the local Sizzler as chris reckons I've earned it (their doing two, two course meals deal right now and at a good price).  So so long for now.