Why boilers suck
Ok, so this may not be what most people concern themselves with all that often, but anyone who knows me will also be aware of my long-standing battle with all things heating related.
It all started about three years ago when I was living in council housing with my young daughter and the local silverfish colony (there was also The Thing who lived under the stairs and ate entire Christmas trees, but we never found out what the hell it was and I have no intention of ever investigating it further) when the first hint of trouble came from my boiler. It started with screaming pipes at three in the morning which then slowly became loud bangs and finally shaking the entire unit in the kitchen until you turned it off for fear of it coming free from the wall and launching itself at you.
Eventually, it died a horrible death, got ripped out and a nice new combi boiler was put in. Of course, it didn't work for three weeks in the middle of winter, as is typical of council issue products, and took a further two days to get an engineer out. But things changed, I met my husband and we moved into our own home earlier this year (oh yeah, and we took the child with us, in case anyone is concerned I left her behind). Everything was fine until the day after we moved in and the boiler would not light. So after much swearing and burning of fingers, we got it lit again and until recently, it was behaving itself.
Two days ago it gave up the ghost...called out an engineer who had a look and said it was dangerous due to no ventilation, the flue was coming away from the wall and the boiler itself was made in 1971 and didn't even exist anymore to repair. We have a genuine fossil in our kitchen, it would appear.
So now, we have no heating until the middle of the month when a sales guy can come out to evaluate the situation and then fleece us for several grand...still, at least we got a refund for the initial engineer visit seeing as he couldn't fix the problem. Yeah, coz £144 will pay for about three bolts on the new radiators...