ENERGY MATTERS

[Stanley]

Ian is right. I went to BG 15 years ago and they have done all my work since. I also have their maintenance contract, I think it's about £18 a month and for that you get all visits and maintenance free including parts. One thing about BG is that they have had such a bad press (undeservedly as far as I am concerned) that they are very customer oriented. If you rang them and leaned on the fact that you are a special case because of your heart condition they would put you on the same status as a house with a baby or a crumblie like me. This means you get priority. My experience is that they are very good, prompt attendance on time and no worries.

[Pluggy]

Just to be different, If I were you David, I'd keep the hot water tank, maybe put a bit more lagging round it and put a new 'vanilla' boiler in. Worcester Bosch is good as has already been suggested. It will be cheaper to install and you won't lose the 'quick' hot water. I have a combi I put in in 2000, I've suffered the slow hot water until about 6 months ago when I put a 15 litre electric "under sink" water heater in. Its no good for baths and we have an electric shower but its fabulous for filling a sink. Modern combis are better becaus they can be set to periodically fire up to keep the hot water in the boiler warm so it doesn't take as long to come on. You've already got the HW tank, keep it...........

Depending on the location of the boiler, you're going to have enough cost getting a condensate drain to it.

[Tardis]

Fully agree about BG.

The service took a while to bed in, and you have to make sure that you're available when they come around.

Otherwise, if it breaks they appear and fix it at no extra cost. The worst year they replaced both pumps and the controller in our system, and it didn't cost anymore.

[Stanley]

Pluggy is right about the disadvantage of combi boilers with getting hot water to the sink. Living alone and having no opposition from Jack I had a simpler solution, I took the handle off the hot water tap on the sink and have survived quite happily since. Once you get used to it, cold water only is no detriment given normal standards of cleanliness. If I need a drop of hot water I boil the kettle. I reckon it reduced ny gas bill by over a third but this is no guide as what works for me isn't necessarily an answer for everyone. I was brought up with no hot water in the kitchen and so it's no sweat for me.

[David Whipp]

This morning, I found that you can wash a family of four with no more than two kettles of hot water at our kitchen sink.

Tom is embracing the spartan regime (though the lazy sod expects me to lather his hair for him).

Alison is using the privacy of the mains temperature shower.

Lucy is in denial.

Audience on Lockfield Drive are turning up with camping seats for greater comfort during the show.

Growing up in this house dring the Cold War, my body was a stranger to warm water.

I remember the excitement when Preston Guild came round and we could marvel at the heat from the hot water tank in the airing cupboard.

You had to fight the cats (and dog for a period) to get a space in front of the settee pulled up close to the front room coal fire. That piece of furniture was the Berlin Wall between Western decadence and Eastern austerity in the nuclear heat race. (The disadvantage of being too close to the fire was having to find wherever the singeing smell was coming from and beat the spark out from the jumper/cat fur/dog/carpet/upholstery or whatever.)

Mum and Dad kept the open fire until their deaths. They did try Economy 7 electric storage heaters for a time, but the meter made Dad dizzy. The storage heaters were a good height for Mum's geranium cuttings overwinter, though she did have to watch out that the frost didn't catch them.

Dad kept coal consumption down to a half a ton delivered every fourth summer or so by scavenging as much wood as he could from the garden and surrounding woodland. Even when chairbound towards the end of his life, he had a pair of loppers propped against his chair to cut small branches in half so as not to feed the fire too much at once.

On one visit in his last months, the loppers were in clear evidence in the front room, but deadwood was nowhere to be seen. When I asked what he was using the loppers for with all the free fuel used up, he indicated the chopped up broken plastic bucket which had been half fed to the fire...

Our coal house was as close as I got to the NUM though my Dad was an organiser in the clothlookers union. There was talk in the family of a rich seam somewhere towards the back on the left. But there was a dangerous squeeze past Dad's piled logs and branches so I generally made do with whatever scraping of slack I could get and a couple of damp logs.

In the dining room, we had a lovely stove with lovely metally enamel casing and mica panes in the door. I can smell the plasticine melting and burning now as you gently pushed a sausage into the stove for baking. The stove burned coke and there was a separate pile in the coal house which got used if Mum had some drying to finish off on a wire rack. I said we had this lovely stove. Unless it's been weighed in, it's probably buried somewhere in the family junk heap and I'd be as well mining it out as waiting for BG to turn up and quote for a new boiler. The stove was probably a pain for Mum to clean the ashes out of and it's place was taken by one of the immediately redundant Economy 7 electric storage heaters - one giant leap backwards for mankind.

I think we'll have a look at re-opening that chimney breast and getting a wood burner (with smoke control zone compliant flue of course).

Now where's my number for Ouzledale?

[David Whipp]

Update: Local plumber and heating engineer Ben Greenwood http://www.visitbarnoldswick.co.uk/reta ... nessid=160 is now a hero as far as family is concerned.

Ben got and fitted a new thermostat for the immersion heater this afternoon and we've a tank of water brewing for showers in the morning.

Me dad will be spinning like a top at the spinning meter... but I think we'll bite the bullet for a day or two and enjoy the luxury, thank you.

Still waiting for BG (British Gas, not Ben Greenwood...) and another local plumber to give us a quote for a new boiler. It won't be a big job to swap out the broken one (less than a day), so could get heating restored within reasonable timescale.

Decision still to be made on make of new boiler...

[Big Kev]

Update: Local plumber and heating engineer Ben Greenwood http://www.visitbarnoldswick.co.uk/reta ... nessid=160 is now a hero as far as family is concerned.

Ben got and fitted a new thermostat for the immersion heater this afternoon and we've a tank of water brewing for showers in the morning.

Me dad will be spinning like a top at the spinning meter... but I think we'll bite the bullet for a day or two and enjoy the luxury, thank you.

Still waiting for BG (British Gas, not Ben Greenwood...) and another local plumber to give us a quote for a new boiler. It won't be a big job to swap out the broken one (less than a day), so could get heating restored within reasonable timescale.

Decision still to be made on make of new boiler...

Ben's a good lad.He sorted the timer out on my 12 year old boiler for a very reasonable rate. Did you get him to quote for a boiler replacement as well?

[Stanley]

Good post and signs of progress. Best of luck with the plumbers and the new boiler. I am felling snug with coal and firewood supplies topped up, sorry......

[David Whipp]

Ben should be giving us a quote today.

[Tizer]

David, in her later years my grandma lived alone in a little old terraced cottage by the Scholes Rostron `pop factory' at Bottomgate, Blackburn. She would sit in front of the fire in the range in her living room, so small her feet were almost in the fire when she sat in the armchair - partly because the room was tiny but also due to her having insisted on keeping a piano against the opposite wall (with wax fruit on the top). The kitchen was divided in two by a low wall - one side was the kitchen itself, the other was used for a big pile of coal. (We always wondered where she got so much coal but maybe it was mined out of the Scholes Rostron stock in the yard!) One day my mum got a message that grandma was ill and needed a doctor, so mum sent for the doc and walked across town to the cottage to meet him there. When they went in grandma was sitting in her chair in front of the fire, feeding a long wooden beam into the flames. She'd found it somewhere and decided it was too good to waste even though she had no way of chopping or sawing it into short pieces. So it went into the fire inch by inch! The doctor was not impressed and made mum take out the timber and throw it into the yard.

[Tizer]

I mentioned in a recent post how we had an awful `bad eggs', hydrogen sulphide stink after some work by the builder...LINK

The smell was there from when the wall was plastered on the Thursday and just as bad on the following Monday. Mixing the various suspects, such as the foams and the cement, adhesives, plaster etc didn't show up any bad smells. The window fitter said `hard wall' plaster always smells like that but he'd never smelt it so bad and never known the smell last longer than a day. He gave the rough plaster two coats of PVA and then a final smooth plaster coat. Since then we haven't detected the sulphide smell. The builder who did the blockwork used wet blocks and our conclusion is that the thick, rough plaster over the aircrete/thermalite blocks stayed damp far too long and this allowed the smell to continue until it was sealed. I just hope the blocks were able to dry sufficiently and that we don't find the smell coming back. Builders are supposed to know that blocks should be kept dry but they never seem to learn. Also, when they did the blockwork I had to tell them to completely fill between the blocks with mortar and to smooth it off - they think it's OK to just put a dab between blocks but that's not good enough when you're trying to insulate a house properly.

I suspect the blocks may have had sulphur in them. There's beginning to be a world surplus of sulphur and people trying to offload it wherever they can. One reason is the increased popularity of the Athabasca Tar Sands in Canada as an alternative to petroleum. The tar is rich in sulphur which has to be refined out and there are now yellow mountains of sulphur in Canada waiting to find an application or anybody who'll take it away. Another increasing source of sulphurous material is the fly ash from coal power stations in China and India where the rising population numbers is increasing the demand for electricity and there's an abundance of coal. So watch out for sulphur appearing where you don't expect it. (Apparently there's something called `sulphur concrete' now.)

[David Whipp]

Tizer, if your grandma had been treated by our late Dr Pickard, I'm sure that he'd have helped her to feed the timber into the fire!

On the boiler front, we're going with Ben Greenwood for the installation. He's given us a reasonable quote, is competent and a personable young man just getting going with his own business. He can do the job on Monday.

Ben suggested two alternatives for suitable boilers. We've opted for a Viessmann (Vitodens 100-W WBIC (35Kw)). The deciding factor was that a recent Which review included that make and model, whereas Intergas (the other suggestion) wasn't covered.

On the woodburner front, I called in for a quick look at the Ouzledale showroom on my perambulation today.

As a PS to my earlier post, I recall a period when the mills were weaving out and looms broken that all we burnt on the front room fire were pirns. Who knows how many thousands we must have got through. Probably rare as proverbial rocking horse muck now.

[Tripps]

I have offered no advice there seemed to be enough. but for what it's worth I had a Viessman boiler fitted three years ago, and have been totally satisfied with it. It comes with a five year guarentee.

[Pluggy]

Viessman are fine. Good solid German engineering, the cheap nasty stuff is Italian.....

Intergas are bit radical, they only have 1 heat exchanger for a Combi and are simpler than most combis. Their vanilla boilers are pretty standard.

[Stanley]

I haven't the faintest idea what my boiler is, no name on it, simply the British Gas 'A'Class. Whatever it is, no problems.
Tiz, I was interested in what you said about wet blocks. Standard engineering practice when building foundations etc was to soak the bricks before laying. Brickies never liked the practice but it results in a far stronger bond. If you ever try to knock down a wall built like that it doesn't break along the joints but across the bricks, they become the weakest part of the structure, not the mortar.
I noticed that the CH must have fired briefly during the night. Winter is upon us!

[Tizer]

These are the lightweight, foamed insulating blocks such as Aircrete or Thermalite which are now used for the inner skin of cavity walls. They can absorb a lot of water and the manufacturers' instructions are to keep them dry in storage and on site. If you build with them wet you build a lot of water into the structure which is hard to get rid of and can migrate elsewhere. Their insulating capacity is poor when wet.

[Big Kev]

On the boiler front, we're going with Ben Greenwood for the installation. He's given us a reasonable quote, is competent and a personable young man just getting going with his own business. He can do the job on Monday.

Great news, the couple of jobs Ben has done for me showed him to be competent and personable. It's good to keep it local too.

[Tizer]

The local window fitters who did our house this last week told me how they have loads of timber in their yard and have to pay to get rid of it in a skip. I made a visit and filled the Golf's boot with timber while the boss of the company complained about having to pay to get shut of it. We told a friend who is involved with the Westonzoyland Steam Pumping Station where they need timber for firing up some of their preserved engines. He went to the window company and has arranged to have all their unwanted timber and will be receiving weekly loads in a van. Everybody happy and the engines get fed and will be in steam more often now!

[PanBiker]

A good result there Tiz.

[Stanley]

A typical charge round here by waste contractors is £400 for each skip.

[Tizer]

Where there's muck there's brass!

[Stanley]

How's the new pot doing on the stove? My stove hours gradually increase as the weather gets colder. I'm tending to giving the house a half hour blast of CH first thing in the morning to keep core temperature up during the day when apart from waste heat in the kitchen I have no heat at all till about 16:00. Once stove is lit the thermostat doesn't go on demand unless it's a very cold night. Front room of course is as warm as toast! Jack appreciates it, he has stopped coming to bed with me but stays on the 'his' sofa all night. One could almost feel sorry for him.......

[Tardis]

I see Pendle are highlighting the need for people to see if they are in a smokeless zone.

They're saying that many folk are opening up their fireplaces and using coal as gas is now so expensive.

[Whyperion]

Thought most of the bagged stuff on sale was of a smokeless variety ( unless they are burning wood ? ).

[Stanley]

No, you can still buy coal and burn it legally outside smokeless zones.
As for people reactivating open fires. I'm afraid they won't find any improvement in their bills because open fires are so inefficient and solid fuel is expensive. Apart from the miserable thermal efficiency of the fire, the flue is dragging cold air into the house and they will re-discover draughts! You have to be able to control the draught and combustion, just as in an industrial boiler and the only way you can do this is to have the fire enclosed with efficient controls, ie. a stove. Then there is the fact that there isn't the core body of open-fire knowledge that we crumblies had instilled in us from our childhood. Even fire-lighting is a mystery! On top of this you have the problem of rotten flues that leak gas out into the house, usually in the cock-loft. I suspect some people will be very disappointed.
One example of the old knowledge. Can any of you remember the dreaded 'Nutty Slack'? This was very low grade coal that was the only coal available in the post-war coal shortages. It took a good stoker to get it to burn at all. One trick was to have a piece of cast iron in the heart of the fire. If you got this red hot with wood and larger lumps you could burn the slack by shovelling it on, waiting for it to cake in the heat and then gently break the crust open to allow air to get through the cracks.