We have moved!

And before you ask, NO, not house again.... I don't think either of us can face that quite yet!

Our blog has moved house, which is considerably easier than really moving house. We had decided a little while ago that we had been neglecting the blog, so we decided to give it a little push, put a bit more thought into it and try to keep the momentum going.

So, from here on in, you can find our blog at www.theraggedyhouse.co.uk.

Please update your bookmarks/RSS feeds etc (HA! Look at me being all presumptuous!) as we won't be adding any more posts to the old site.  It will be auto directing to here for the time being, though it may get shut down eventually.

Hello boiler, bye-bye shower

We had our new combi boiler fitted a few months ago. The old one was struggling - it could only produce about an inch of hot water before making some horrific noises, giving up and going cold again. Furthermore, when we started a boiler care contract with British Gas, we were basically told it was a waste of time as it would be impossible to source any of the parts for it if it broke. 

A new boiler was ordered and installed. We were quite lucky as the pipework was the right size already so there was very little work to do to install the new boiler - it took less than a day!

Left: Old; Right: New

The new one is nice and efficient and came with some gadgetry:

The new wireless receiver for the combined thermostat and timer has been installed in one of the kitchen cupboards to replace the old timer. Its left a bit of an unsightly gap but it will do!

Our new all-singing-all-dancing thermostat and timer. You can text it, control it online or use an iPhone app to switch it on/change the temperature/change the timings etc - very geeky!

So, now we can have baths again:

Left: The boiler would only produce about an inch of water before; Right: Now we can have real baths again!

It was a good thing we replaced the boiler when we did as about a month ago our electric shower gave up the ghost and stopped producing hot water. You would think during a heat wave a cold shower wouldn't be so bad, but it really was too cold!

The old broken shower.

We called out a plumber for a quote on fixing it and he managed to narrow it down to two parts: one which would cost £15 to replace and one which would cost closer to £60. As a new electric shower would cost around £70-£100 anyway, we decided to order the cheaper part and see if that would fix it, but it didn't work.

We were both a bit relieved at that! It was a pathetic shower anyway and when we chose our new boiler we picked one that would allow us to install a thermostatic mixer shower in the future. So, we've decided to bring our showery-plans forward and have bought a new Mira shower. We managed to get £60 off by buying it at the Hedge End B&Q store, rather than our local Southampton one.

Mira Pronta EV shower

We're hoping to install this soon, but at the moment we're making do with baths and showering at work.

Taps - The conclusion?

So apparently the taps weren't quite done!

Olives.  Not avocados, as I have repeatedly called them today!

These tricky little blighters turned out to be the problem!  Despite stating confidently, last night, that the job was finished, it turned out that they were still leaking every so slightly.

So today, after getting a couple of hours sleep following my night shift, I decided to attack the problem and get it sorted, hopefully once and for all.  Stripping the pipes down again was a lot easier today having had the experience from yesterday.  I managed to cut the offending olives off fairly easily and replace them.  Add some new nuts to the compression joint and I hoped we were ready to go.

Fingers crossed.  Turn the water back on again.....Success!  No leaking anymore.  Another 20 minutes saw me fit the new plug-plunger thingy (edit: apparently called Pop-Up Waste) and we now have a functioning sink once more.

Do I dare attack the bath tomorrow and attempt to change those taps too?  I'm not sure...

Taps - Who knew they could be so awkward!

Our latest foray in to the world of home improvement has led us down the path of tap replacement.

This wasn't so much a choice, as a decision made for us.  Two nights ago, the taps in the bathroom decided that they had served their time and that they were no longer required to hold the water back.  So, on returning home, we found the taps running and impossible to turn off without isolating the water pipes leading to the taps.

This has meant that the last two days have been spent trying to buy/change the taps.  I have absolutely no plumbing experience, which will become quite evident later!

We decided on some nice, clean-cut taps from Screwfix, thinking that we would replace both the sink and bath taps so that everything matched.

Yesterday was mostly spent removing the old tap...

 

...and figuring out what I needed to do to install the new one...

...which was completed today...(ish!).

Unfortunately, my wonderful plumbing skills ended just shy of a proper job.  Having connected everything up correctly (I thought), I turned on the water supply again and, to my joy, watched water leaking from the compression joint in the pipe!  Time had run out though, so I had to isolate the water, get changed, have dinner and run off to work, thinking that I could return to the job tomorrow.

WRONG!

As if destined by some annoying little quirk of fate (the one that states "as soon as you can't do anything about the problem, that's when it'll rear it's ugly little head"), I got the phone call from home almost as soon as I got to work.  "There's water dripping through the ceiling in the kitchen".... Great!.

Annoyed, stressed and stuck at work, the job fell to the lady of the house to try and fix it.  Which she did with apparent ease, with the help of our friend, Daz (Cheers dude!). Apparently, it was a simple case of tightening the compression joint.  Makes me wonder how I managed to make the job last for most of the day!  Anyway, either which way, I think we now have a working, non-leaking and presentable sink tap.

Not bad for a days work.  At this rate, the house might be finished before I retire (in 3 decades time!).