What have experimental plastics ever done for us?

[hirez]

In accordance with the law of household devices, our combi boiler had a freakout on Sunday morning. While the rads are fine, the magic thing that diverts the hot water to the sinks and shower (and the electronics that make the activity LEDs act like a Cylon trying to look round a corner) is refusing to play.

Cinsequonty I have had yet another ablute in a bucket followed by a thankfully brief cold shower.

I was going on (as one does) to Ma about the terrible injustice of it all, when she laughed and reminded me that she grew up with no mains water, no electricity and hot water (such as it was) supplied by coal-fired range. Our walk-in shower would have been considered a space-module or complex piece of scientific apparatus with no obvious function.

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Ah, Simon's did the same thing recently. I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings but apparently when that happens the best thing is to get a new boiler.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Bollocks, it's just tech. Fix it.

If you need parts, fire up Usenet. news://uk.d-i-y still has a bloke on there that fixes PCBs, controllers and fans.

I have a Worcester Bosch. It's older than my Volvo and more reliable. The Haynes manual is better too.

[maluse.livejournal.com]

Boiler manufacturers often use an innovative design whereby the electronics can blow up in order to protect the fuse. Still, if the rads are working then it's only partially blown. Time to bodge an Arduino/RaspPi in, then you can add some unnecessary features like making the radiators thrum when you receive email, etc.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's already had a new logic board a few years ago.

Andy-the-boiler didn't seem phased by the problem, so we shall see what happens tomorrow.

[hsb.livejournal.com]

Boarding school taught me how to bathe efficiently at speed; which on occasion meant leaping in as it started running, splashing a lot, and being finished more or less within a minute or two. (8 baths and 4 showers to 69 girls meant turnaround had to be fast, and the hot water may run out. I bathed in the 30 mins we had to get up and dressed for breakfast).

It turns out you can boil a kettle and a pan or so of water, add some cold water, and have sufficient water for a shallow bath like the ones I used to have, which has been useful more times than I can tell, particularly when I had to bathe E sans a working water heater.

I think it was Uni where I learned to get properly clean with just a sinkful of water and a flannel. This only requires one kettle, which is easier to manage when your housemates use up the hot water.

Mind you, I *heart* my morning shower, but I retain the skills of my youth.

H

[liz-lowlife.livejournal.com]

This takes me back to my mother's recounts of childhood ablutions.
She comes from "old money" as in big house, posh accent, no pennies to pay the bills.
She grew up between bouts of boarding school in a big ol' place in St. Margaret's called "The White House".

"I was always reasonably clean," she once remarked, "because I was the youngest and therefore, my brother, two stepsisters and indeed my mother and father had the bathwater after me as I was first to bed."

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Fingers crossed.

[ramtops.livejournal.com]

Fine if it's a good boiler. The diverter on ours was dodgy, and at one point we had two British Gas vans outside, with the occupants trying to fix it. They never did, not properly. This was a cheapy boiler,and in the end we replaced it.

[sarah-mum.livejournal.com]

No shower, hot water provided by burning wood (even in the hottest summer), save water: bath with a friend. That's Chumlodge then.

When we move, I shall wax nostalgic about the heating while revelling in GHC and an actual shower.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

New control valve - £120 all in. Not quite a bargain, but plenty good enough for jazz and hot showers.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Our Andy was quite scathing about British Gas..

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The reason we have a somewhat expensive walk-in would be the previous 'n' years of Rayburn-stoking, having to remember to turn on the immersion an hour before, having to crouch in the bath under a 'shower' attachment plumbed to the mixer taps[1], showers driven from mixer taps in general, showers driven by 'gravity'-fed 'hot' water, mouldy shower-curtains, clammy shower-curtains, shower-curtains in general[2], American combination 'shower' 'taps', having to toddle the length of the house in the depths of winter to the lean-to where the 'shower' is installed in yr bath-robe...




[1] Attention English plumbers, hotels and guesthouses: This is a shit idea. Stop it.
[2] See [1].