05-02-2013, 09:02 PM
Hi,
I took Bron over to Boundary Mills in Colne today as planned for some well deserved retail therapy. The journey to Colne was scary with lots of heavy snow falling and the main street in Brierfield near Colne was sheet ice. What a difference the return journey home was; all the ice had disappeared along with most of the snow because it was lashing down with rain. I no longer cared what the weather was doing and was fed up being held prisoner at home because of it.
I've just been catching up on this thread which has rapidly moved forward. What a lot of useful information has been added regarding heating a house. I would never ever allow solar panels to be fitted to our roof as I think them to be nothing other than a gimmick with neighbours copying each other thinking they are missing out. I would be very worried about the attachments causing leaks through the roof and this alone is enough to put me off; living here on the exposed valley side the panels would be subjected to very strong winds.
Wind turbines I also class as a gimmick and would never want to own one unless it was one I had put together from scrap just for the fun of it.
I can see the benefit of installing heat pumps such as shown by Nick. Unfortunately although our rear garden is plenty large enough it is steeply sloping with lots of big trees putting out lots of roots; it's impossible to dig in the garden without hitting roots.
Our recent gas bill was something like £320 which considering Bron and I are at home retired and like to be warm isn't too bad; the central heating sure is convenient and having a combi boiler means constant running hot water when needed. Our boiler has a remote control which remains in the bedroom; we only use the remote for switching the heating on or off as the radiator valves control the room temperatures; all the system is frost protected; the boiler automatically fires up at temperatures below 5 degrees and the radiator valves if turned off are set for frost protection; the entire system works well for us. Apart from the boiler breakdown it is now wonderful to turn on the radiator in the workshop; this quickly brings the workshop up to comfort as I fitted a decent sized double radiator and I'm sure because it is part of the central heating it will be cheaper to heat the workshop this way than previously with electric heaters.
Recently there has been advertisements on TV where a brand new quality boiler is fitted and the cost is spread over ten years this being from £17 per month; we are now paying £21 per month just for boiler insurance so the new boiler and insurance appears to be a terrific bargain?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1tHfd4qIaw
British Gas are always on our street in fact I'm surprised British Gas doesn't have a permanent engineer here; over the last few weeks at least four of our neighbours have had British Gas in. David sums up British Gas very well indeed. British Gas are always available whenever I ring with a problem; the engineers are quick to locate and fix the fault; the engineer fixing our boiler even had the correct diverter valve in his van so our boiler was fired up in minutes; it took him longer to do the safety tests. I doubt I would have saved much money by shopping around but by going straight to British Gas I sure saved myself a great deal of unwanted hassle.
Yes it was the outer electrical part of the diverter valve which failed and this was dead easy to get to being changed in about a minute; the engineer checked his lap top for the price of this item saying it is £100. I'm not surprised because a few years ago I changed the pump and this too cost around £100; it was most annoying at the time because Screwfix sell pumps for less than half this amount but their pumps don't fit. It's a good little money earner for the boiler manufacturers to fit bespoke pumps?
I've forgotten what this thread was about but it's interesting.
Kind regards, Col.
I took Bron over to Boundary Mills in Colne today as planned for some well deserved retail therapy. The journey to Colne was scary with lots of heavy snow falling and the main street in Brierfield near Colne was sheet ice. What a difference the return journey home was; all the ice had disappeared along with most of the snow because it was lashing down with rain. I no longer cared what the weather was doing and was fed up being held prisoner at home because of it.
I've just been catching up on this thread which has rapidly moved forward. What a lot of useful information has been added regarding heating a house. I would never ever allow solar panels to be fitted to our roof as I think them to be nothing other than a gimmick with neighbours copying each other thinking they are missing out. I would be very worried about the attachments causing leaks through the roof and this alone is enough to put me off; living here on the exposed valley side the panels would be subjected to very strong winds.
Wind turbines I also class as a gimmick and would never want to own one unless it was one I had put together from scrap just for the fun of it.
I can see the benefit of installing heat pumps such as shown by Nick. Unfortunately although our rear garden is plenty large enough it is steeply sloping with lots of big trees putting out lots of roots; it's impossible to dig in the garden without hitting roots.
Our recent gas bill was something like £320 which considering Bron and I are at home retired and like to be warm isn't too bad; the central heating sure is convenient and having a combi boiler means constant running hot water when needed. Our boiler has a remote control which remains in the bedroom; we only use the remote for switching the heating on or off as the radiator valves control the room temperatures; all the system is frost protected; the boiler automatically fires up at temperatures below 5 degrees and the radiator valves if turned off are set for frost protection; the entire system works well for us. Apart from the boiler breakdown it is now wonderful to turn on the radiator in the workshop; this quickly brings the workshop up to comfort as I fitted a decent sized double radiator and I'm sure because it is part of the central heating it will be cheaper to heat the workshop this way than previously with electric heaters.
Recently there has been advertisements on TV where a brand new quality boiler is fitted and the cost is spread over ten years this being from £17 per month; we are now paying £21 per month just for boiler insurance so the new boiler and insurance appears to be a terrific bargain?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1tHfd4qIaw
British Gas are always on our street in fact I'm surprised British Gas doesn't have a permanent engineer here; over the last few weeks at least four of our neighbours have had British Gas in. David sums up British Gas very well indeed. British Gas are always available whenever I ring with a problem; the engineers are quick to locate and fix the fault; the engineer fixing our boiler even had the correct diverter valve in his van so our boiler was fired up in minutes; it took him longer to do the safety tests. I doubt I would have saved much money by shopping around but by going straight to British Gas I sure saved myself a great deal of unwanted hassle.
Yes it was the outer electrical part of the diverter valve which failed and this was dead easy to get to being changed in about a minute; the engineer checked his lap top for the price of this item saying it is £100. I'm not surprised because a few years ago I changed the pump and this too cost around £100; it was most annoying at the time because Screwfix sell pumps for less than half this amount but their pumps don't fit. It's a good little money earner for the boiler manufacturers to fit bespoke pumps?
I've forgotten what this thread was about but it's interesting.
Kind regards, Col.
Happiness is a wreck of a cabinet to restore.
