Tag Archives: boiler

Potterton Netaheat you have been retired after 20 years of virtually fault free service. (And now unceremoniously dumped in the front garden)

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So started off a very long day at 6:15AM. The dog was already on the ball after checking her calendar last night, knowing it was Wednesday, she was up and ready for breakfast, wolfed it down and was ready to get into her harness in about three minutes. We sat in the car and discussed North Korea’s missile launch while we waited for the car to defrost. She got to day care at 6:50, I was back in bed by 7:15.

Was rudely awaken by two smiling boiler fitters at 8:30. They came in, I introduced them to the kettle and coffee machine then left them to it. They turned the water off grunted a bit and got on with it. Deciding that it was pointless trying to go back to bed I started work, well I started iPlayer anyway and caught up with another episode of Merlin anyway.

Today I was working on OsX (iMac) again, found the issue with the audio, wasn’t audio related at all, but was to do with memory alignment, OsX requires 16 byte alignment as it uses multimedia registers. Also fixed a few issues with minimise/maximise. Got one of our apps working fine on iMac which was great. Also did a few more bits on the upcoming mobile game update.

Boiler men were finished by 2PM. Okay, lets see. Boiler fitted, the inside of the flu has been jammed with expanding foam and not the neatest thing in the world. They told me my three port valve wasn’t working properly and when there was a call for heat only it was also going to the water tank. They also told me for maximum efficiency it I should run the boiler on max. They filled all the paperwork out and buggered off (I even paid them).

Now here’s the reality. The outside flu is tidy, the inside looks like it was done by a 3 year old. The actual boiler fitting is fine. There’s nothing wrong with the three port valve, I tested it on heat/heat&water/water and the valve moved between all positions just fine, I assume they didn’t have the controls set correctly. In the paperwork they said they flushed the system and then added inhibitor using the brand name ‘Fernox’, this is complete bollocks. How do I know this? Well they chucked the used container of cheapo Toolstation inhibitor in the kitchen bin. Running the boiler at max temperature setting, again, as far as I can tell complete bollocks. Every bit of research I have done says a condensing boiler gets more efficient when the return flow is below 55 degrees, so chucking the water out at 86 and then hoping for a 30 degree drop across all the radiators is a bit much. Also they only drained the system from the boiler level not from the under the lowest radiator, this left half the system full and not flushed. This also introduced an airlock, meaning I’ll be bleeding radiators for the next six months as they will contain more air than my ass after a decent curry. So would I use them again? Too bloody right I would. I paid about five hundred quid for fitting which included all sundries, testing and paperwork. Plus about three tubes of expanding foam. At the end of the day British Gas wanted an extra £1500 for the exact same job (okay, except the £7 I had to spend on a length of cable). They may have done a better job of the finish and may have even drained it properly but at the end of the day, it was the same boiler. So I paid a bargain bucket price for the bear legal and safety requirements, which is exactly what I wanted. I couldn’t have done it myself as it wouldn’t be legal and I don’t have a fucking great drill for the flu. Also I don’t have the testing gear necessary. So overall, very happy, just need to rebalance the radiators and adjust the output to the minimum required to reach the required temperature. Oh and bleed all the fart air out of the radiators.

After they went, I decided that as it was only minus six outside it would be a great idea to go out and run 12 miles. So I did. I then came back and picked up the dog. She was very happy. I was very happy. I had lunch. Did a bit more work and finished a bit earlier due to the early start.

I then cleaned out the cupboards where I’d removed all the stuff yesterday for the condense pipe and put all the stuff back in. More wine turned up today, and dog food. I’ll try not to use that as nibbles. Had a bath, drank wine, ate salad. Dog is at the vet tomorrow for her shots. I’ve got Friday off, I won’t get excited.

I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay

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Started off this morning pruning a tree. I now have a garden full of said tree and no where to put it until the wheelie bin has been emptied. I reckon it’s a good two loads worth. Asked the neighbour if she minded if I cut one of the uprights out over her side so I could reach it, I got the response “Do want you need to do Tim, the things a pain in the bloody ass.”. I don’t think she minded.

After that we went up to Cribbs and walked round various toy-shops. Didn’t buy anything. One toy shop had a couple of storm troopers outside and a rather fat Jedi. Inside though there were quite a good number of cute male staff, far better quality than Toy’s R’us.

Came back, had lunch (boiled eggs, It’s a Sunday). Then Sarah and Shaun came round. We sat down and had coffee, followed by more coffee and chatted mainly bollocks about boilers, bathrooms, work, ailments, cars (breaking down rather than driving them) and dogs. Mainly as ours was trying to leap up and kill them.

Afterwords I got my new steamer out, steamed things. Tiles mainly. Then decided that wouldn’t it be great to clean the over door glass. The inside of it. Two hours later, half a tub of something I had sat in the back of a cupboard for ten years and said steamer, it’s now actually transparent. It’s something I’ll replace sooner rather than later anyway.

Then I briefly hoovered and played with gadget No.2, the carpet shampooer. This was great fun, the colour of the water when emptying the tank was darker than my soul.

Found the memory card with all my honeymoon photos on, so stuck those on the i-Mac, then finally got round to doing mothers photo album thing. That’s only been pending since June.

Was going to buy some shoes off Groupon, but they have sold out. You can never have enough shoes.

Set up the iPhone5. It’s an iPhone. It does stuff I’ll never use. Siri is quite amusing though, I said, “Tell me about sex with camels”, It did a Google search for ‘Sex with Carols’. Also rather amusingly I asked “Tell me who I am?”, it responded with, “I don’t know who you are, but you can set that info in settings.”. It did correctly tell me though what armadillos taste like, always essential info, when you end up in a Central American Synapsida restaurant and they have run out of Pizza.

Right, bath time. It will be nice next week to not have the entertain plumbers. Well it’s not like I put on a show or anything, I didn’t open the airing cupboard to Chris Tarrent sat on a stool, saying, “Just 15 questions between you and 3 litres of inhibitor.”. I digress.

“How does the dog hold the golf club?”, “I have no idea.”

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The morning started off pretty well. Jamie wasn’t wearing any pants which is usually a good sign that some vague action could happen. It did, well for me anyway, I didn’t recipricate. Then he asked what the dog was planning on doing today, I said that she was planning on playing golf as she wanted to get her handicap down. He then asked how she could hold a club. It was far too early and I was still out of coffee so couldn’t be arsed to come up with a witty response, so just said I had no idea. He went off to work, obviously thinking intensly how a dog could play golf without opposable thumbs. However she would have managed it, she would have still played better than me.

I went and did a house check for a kitten, all fine. Then I picked up a sim-card for my iPhone5 and did the shopping. Both rather dull activities, oh, also got some crickets.

Ate lunch, toast and cheese. Then assembled my new Bissel carpet shampooer. It looks very impressive, now need to find somewhere to keep it. Also got one of those steamer things. The new batteries for the doorbell turned up together with some new garden tools. I may take them to the bedroom later.

Walked into town, bought some drain cleaner, walked back again.

Visited mother, which was a good time to catchup on FaceBook. Mind you she has got back into baking again and does make a rather mean fruit cake. I cleaned out her Magnaclense (had to get a boiler reference in their somewhere) and increased the pressure on her boiler.

Came back, did the accounts and bits. Also got this rather nice little bluetooth keyboard iPad case thing, which I’m typing this up on. I’m very impressed works really quite well.

So all done, just going to fry the chicken ready for dinner, which is something I can’t spell so won’t bother as the spell checker doesn’t seem to be working. Then a quick bath I think, may be some wine.

Bought three lots of coffee beans so going to have a few testers. Getting very used to having it black now, makes me stoned.

Lots of fun house/garden work to get on with tomorrow. I think Sarah is popping over as well to test out the new coffee machine.

Not a boiler man in sight

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So today it was straight on with a couple of issues with the mobile game. Got those all sorted. Then it was back on to GDB and Android.

My iPhone5 arrived. It’s an iPhone, I won’t reach orgasm over it. It looks a bit big. I need to get a nano sim for it as it won’t activate without one.

Took the dog out, Jamie’s day off so he came as well, which didn’t work out well as there was a delivery while we were out.

Got a new quote from boiler man no.3, this was for the same boiler as boiler man no.6 but was £1600 cheaper. Okay, so I have to do my own electrics and get Paul to check it, but that’s not going to cost £1600. Haven’t had a quote from no.5 and no.1 has vanished since I basically mentioned he didn’t really seem to know what he was on about and wasn’t gas safe registered. Anyway, boiler man no.3 has been given the job, it will hopefully be done the beginning of December. I’m still waiting for a bathroom quote from the same man.

Made some good progress on the whole GDB thing. I can now compile in VC2010 and it produces all the correct files in all the correct places by using a vast amount of scripts. Only a couple of bits to solve now.

Went to gym, ran for seventy seven minutes. That’s around 45 miles this week.

Looked into balancing radiators, they could do with doing again before new boiler is fitted as they haven’t been done since all the insulation was added.

Anyway, Midsomer Murders now, followed by torture porn night.

And tomorrow I promise no more boiler talk.

Boiler man No.6

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Started this morning far too early as Sasha had her induction at Pawstretchers doggy daycare. They had 59 dogs there, she failed to eat any of them, so she’s going back for a full day next Wednesday. That’ll get her out the way of the new cleaners anyway, so hopefully they will last more than a day. On the way back in the car I didn’t put her anti-reverse colour restraint-escape-device on, half way down the A38 she’s sat in the passenger seat staring at me.

Came back, did a couple of updates on the mobile game. Then gas man No.6 arrived. I was slightly disappointed as he wasn’t a tosser. He measured the place (not intimately, just worked out the volume) asked about loft and cavity wall insulation, looked at the tank. Then sat on his laptop for ten minutes making pointless small talk. To my surprise he was only a grand over priced. Mind you did quote for a smaller boiler than any one else. Then he made a couple of fatal mistakes….first was to say he’d give me the same discount that was available last month ‘if I signed up today’, hmmm. Second was to say that if a normal plumber did the electrics they wouldn’t be 17th addition approved and therefore wouldn’t get a part-p certificate but I could get it checked for about 300 quid. That bits horse-shit, and I bet half the British Gas engineers are only gas safe safe registered and not NICEIC approved, it’s questionable if pump overrun cables require part-p certification anyway.

So enough of bloody boiler men. I may just say fuck-it, spend 1500 quid on another holiday and just use some of Jamie’s blubber as a giant candle.

Then continued with getting GDB to work. I think I’ve come to the conclusion that for it to work it really has to be under Cygwin. I looked at a few other shells but they just didn’t work. So in the end I’m just working to get vs-android output everything in the correct place so I can launch a bash shell and call ndk-gdb. It ain’t pretty but it will certainly do for the time being and is better than what we have currently.

Went to gym. Ran for seventy seven minutes. That’s over a marathon distance already this week. It isn’t very interesting and the tread-mill keeps electrocuting me every time I touch it.

Finally got to the end of the Abu Dhabi GP. Not a bad one. Suppose it’s bed time now. May be have a banana first.

Oh, apparently my iPhone5 has been dispatched. That can sit in a box until I can be arsed to sort out a micro sim card for it.

Boiler man No.4 & No.5

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So two more boiler men today. First one was nice enough but did want to remove half the pipes in the airing cupboard, including the main heating feed and expansion pipe, to me that seems somewhat pointless when you could just connect a hose to it and blast it.

Next one was this evening and arrived an hour late. He was a little bit ‘in your face’ and you felt like he was invading your personal space but I grew to like him. He knew what he was on about and did mention that the gas pipe was probably 22mm up to the cooker, that opens some interesting possibilities. I’ll need to yank the cooker out and take a gander or try and look through one of the air bricks under the house.

Had a quote back from No.3 and just now No.4. No.4 as I guessed would be a bit pricey if he wants to change half the pipework and do the dreaded power flush. No.3 however (which is Rob Sarah’s friend) came in with two very competitive quotes, which may be cheaper if the gas pipe checks out. I need to do the wiring for this one, but it saves a few hundred quid and I can get Paul to check it.

Anyway, enough about boilers….Spent the working day doing a few things on the mobile game and then trying to get GDB to work. After lots of buggering about I finally got it to do source debugging. I certainly need to do a lot more work on it though before it becomes useful.

Talking of bugger about, very good sex first thing this morning, even if it was with Jamie. It woke him up anyway, he even participated at times.

Walked the dog, another unexciting road tour today, it was very cold. She is going for her doggy day care induction tomorrow, so will see how many dogs and people she can attack.

Moved the server into the cabinet, connected up the printers two it and it’s all still currently working. Ordered a new case for it with integrated PSU, that should sort out the power up problem. Haven’t ordered the replacement pfSense stuff yet, will see how the week goes.

Went to gym. Ran for seventy six minutes. Now watching the Abu Dhabi GP, I may get through all of it by the end of the week.

Mr British Gas tomorrow, I’ll be very disappointed if he’s not a tosser.

Today I moved my life

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So started off with a call from plumber…lets call him No.3. He came round pretty much instantly, seems like a nice chap, friend of Sarah’s. Did mention that the boiler would need a permanent live as it will be switched from the time at the moment. It’s a very good point and it’s the first one to mention it. He also didn’t mind who I got to do it, hmm wonder who that will be.

Spent the day sorting out routing issues on the mobile game. Mainly an analysis and optimisation task. Appeared to be quite successful. I’ll see what Al says the performance is like on his iPhone4.

Took dog out for a walk, today we choose a new rather dull route around the industrial estate. Can’t see us doing it again. Pawstretchers called and Sasha is going to visit on Wednesday.

So tomorrow I have two plumbers, one in the morning, one early evening. So far none of them have been even vaguely attractive, let alone cute. How come in porn films the plumber is hot and has a tool like a tree trunk?

Went to gym. Did Body Combat, followed by half hour of running.

I do like my new coffee machine, almost got through a bag of beans in two days. But now does mean I won’t be able to sleep for a week.

Spent the evening moving my life, well moving MannMansion.com anyway, which contains this blog. It hasn’t moved far, about two and a half feet for the moment, but it’s now on the mini-itx box.

So the joys of moving a Ubuntu server from one machine to another. First install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server on to new machine. Had to do this via a USB stick as I forgot it only has a CD drive not a DVD drive. Once that’s installed, best to backup fstab as restoring a backup with a different UID isn’t pretty. It’s all going to go to cock anyway as grub will have bad entries but that can be fixed later. The other thing to do is backup the udev persistent files. This was the cause of my missing network connection, it was there but moved from eth0 to eth1. Then stop postfix and apache2 on old server. Back it up as normal and then copy the backup file to the USB external drive. Then plug that drive into the new server, mount it and restore the backup. Now copy the backup persistent files over the new versions and restore the old fstab. Then reboot and watch it all horribly go wrong. You’ll get no end of mount errors, but if you ignore them all it will actually boot correctly. So reboot and run Ubuntu recovery, when that’s loaded run the ‘repair packages’ option. This will update everything and most importantly rewrite the grub boot loader. When this is done reboot again and you’ll get an error about the file system not being properly unmounted, ignore this and let it do the file system check. It will then boot as normal. Next reboot will be error free.

So I connected up to the pfSense box DMZ and made it live. I’m surprised that my SSL certificates are still valid, but that all seems fine. Apache is working okay, imap appears to be okay. Weather it’s receiving mail or not I’m not sure of yet. I’ll give it a couple of minutes….Sending mail appears to be working….dum de dum….Oh I haven’t got the printers plugged back in yet or the UPS, but I’m not really expecting any issues with those. And receiving mail is working. So final job then is to move old server out of cabinet and install new server, which is actually the old proxy box, which needs to be changed as the PSU isn’t really up to the job. So I’ll sort out a new case and then look into the second project, changing the pfSense box to a machine that uses less power than the sun….

The butt cheek incident

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So this morning I got up a bit later than planned. No particular reason, not like we were having sex or anything. I had breakfast, the dog had breakfast, we both took a shit (different venues, same process). I then ventured out into the garden and got rid of the last of the soil, which was now very much mud and the knackered paddling pool. Also swept up all the leaves and bits. Need to get some new loppers.

Oh before that (chronology not a strong point as usual), I installed the new coffee maker, install being the correct word. If it was any bigger I’d have to take a wall out. Set it all up. It makes coffee. It actually makes very nice coffee. I look forward to trying out various different beans. It’s a posh one, bean to cup, Delonghi. It also produces frothy milk, so that’s 3 things in the house that can do that now.

Right, so had lunch. Sunday so boiled eggs. Then on to the next few jobs, which was a bit of painting and filling over old network panel holes, now that all the cables are in and also over some moved light fittings. Then cleaning out the bathroom cabinets. I’m sure those travel sickness pills with a sale by of 1997 are still serviceable, but in the bin they went. Then cleaned out the laundry room cupboards. I do not require three hundred different pots of shoe polish.

Then I went out and did a house check for a dog. Bit of a shame this one as the house isn’t directly connected to the garden, so I think I’m going to have to say no.

Then decided to swap the servers over. Now the new one does need a new case and PSU as the old one won’t power on properly from a mains on, also the switches are still a bit screwed. But backed up the old server to a USB external drive. Installed Ubuntu on the new machine and then restored the backup. Didn’t work. I’d named one file system MANNMANSION and the other one mannmansion. It got quite upset about this. It also then failed to initialise the network connection. So both things need to be looked into a bit more.

So now it’s a Sunday and time for a bath. And some wine. Followed by some dinner.

Oh, Sarah knows a boiler man, so I’ve added him to the list, that will be about seven in total. Still, one of them may actually be okay.

You never got to the bottom of this and really thought I was going to talk about that did you? Oh may be one day, when I’ve drunk too much perhaps…

You’ll need a gondola to get across that kitchen

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I think boiler man number one has given up now and probably will never hear from him again. May be I teased him a bit too much when I said that the boiler he recommended would require a pump overrun cable and a pump bypass.

So got up, relatively early for a Saturday, didn’t want to have a wanking incident with Keith Lemon again. Walked the dog, took her to the vets to get her worming tablets and flea stuff. Been trying to phone people for home checks and re-checks but no one wants to answer (may be my mothers contacted them and she’s going for some sort of quasi revenge). Reserved my new coffee machine at Curry’s. Did the shopping, which as usual was in two parts as Jamie didn’t give me his list in time. He wanted to blue tooth it to my phone, but forced him to write it down. He still has the ability to write, unlike me, but his writing is appalling at the best of times, but when scribbled with a green marker pen, it makes it even more of a challenge.

Had lunch. It was toast today, with cheese. Oh and half a sausage roll. The dog required the other half to take with her worming tablets. Well it’s not like you take a headache pill and have a glass of water chaser, she didn’t swallow them down then think what I really need now is a sausage roll to make it a square meal, I put the pills inside the roll…

Anyway, then drove up to Curry’s and picked up said coffee maker. At this point I realised just how big the bloody thing is, you can buy smaller cars…you can buy smaller houses. Anyway, then went to John Lewis to spend a tenner on a Dualit milk frothing jug. Need to go posh all the way, one day I’ll have granite work tops and a Dualit toaster, I’ve already made a start with the Brabantia bin… Came back and put coffee machine in lounge, where it will stay until I get a bigger kitchen, or move some shit about. I then did the cleaning, this is my ‘every other week’ clean as hopefully the new cleaners will start next week. So basically hoovered the dog hair off the carpets and cleaned the kitchen worktops, cooker and sink. Then cleaned the bathroom sink and loo. I also cleaned the old coffee maker out and de-scaled it. That’s going to be someone’s Christmas present…

Did the accounts, wrote this and now I think it’s time for a quick bath before I make the dinner.

During all the evening Sasha has been barking due to all the fireworks. I gave her a bone but she was too scared to eat it. After I calmed her down (her little heart was going flat out), she wouldn’t leave me alone. When I was cleaning the kitchen she lade on my feet, in the bathroom she was on the bath mat and then when I did the bills she was at the base of my chair. When Jamie came home she decided she had enough security so found where she left the bone and destroyed it in about ten minutes. Normal service has been resumed. I’ve left contact details with Pawstretchers doggy day care, so may take her there next week.

Anyway, time for that bath. Oh, the title? It was just something odd I read this morning which has stuck in my mind all day, a bit like butt cheeks.

Boilers, Bypasses and overruns

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Today I was rudely awaken by my mobile. It wasn’t my mother so I answered it. It was a boiler man who I emailed last night. So I actually started work at about 8:45 which is mostly unheard of. He turned up just after 9. Now this one is gas safe registered, asked all the right questions and actually looked in the airing cupboard. He gets a gold start for telling me it will need a pump overrun cable (which he said he’ll need to get an electrician to do, yawn, it’s about 8 feet, so if it’s any more than £20 quid he can piss off) and a pump bypass. And the dear old gas pipe upgrading to 22mm. All things that boiler man number one failed to grasp. Incidentally, boiler man number one has go back to me and said that he does all the work, then gets the gas safe man to connect the gas and check it all. I’m not sure I’m over keen on the work being done by someone who is not qualified, I wonder what the gas safe people have to say about that…..Anyway to appease him I sent a mail back saying that the boiler he is recommending is fine, but as I actually bothered to read the installation manual it will require a 22mm pipe, pump over run and bypass. The bypass you could possibly get away with as the mid-position valve will always free flow through at least one radiator as it’s possible the TRV’s will close down the others, but really for that to work 100% you would have to fit two lock shield valves to a small radiator, say a towel rail. I know sound like I know far too much about plumbing, well the same with anything in life, you can learn a hell of a lot from a book, after all that’s was education is mainly anyway, reading books. I’m not saying that you can learn anything in five minutes and become an expert, that takes years and then theirs experience to take into account. But I always think it’s wise on any type of job like this, just to do a bit of research. Don’t appear cocky or they’ll bump the price up, but don’t appear to be clueless or you will be royally fucked. Books these days of course have been replaced by Google, I don’t think I’ve come across a book titled ‘Now I’ve got a boiler’. Any way boiler man number three coming Tuesday evening and number four sometime next week. And then we have number five, my special one, British Gas. They phoned today from a nice call centre (the guy sounded about 12), just to make sure I was going to be in for the appointment so I can be bored to death by a salesman. I’m really quite looking forward to that one. I think in the end I just won’t bother and will wait for the bloody thing to go bang.

Work wise, spent the bulk of the day adding Android projects to our existing current apps. It’s quite a long process but got quite a bit of it done. Then fixed up a couple of issues on the mobile game.

Went to the gym, did Body Pump, followed by running for forty minutes. That then allows me to eat pizza, and drink beer.

Just trying to sort out an external USB drive for the server for backing up to when I change to the new unit. I found one which contains backups from 2006. I’m just consolidating them down and will archive them off, you never know when you want to look at a project you did six years ago….I’ve got backup CD’s here going back over twenty years…and no I’ve never bloody looked at them.

Need to do a home check tomorrow, it’s actually for one of the dogs that I did a check for before and now been returned…It’s an animal it has feelings, you didn’t buy it from QVC. Talking of which ours has finally settled down, she really doesn’t like fireworks.

Right, now it’s bath and wine time. Also time to phone my mother. There are advantages to doing this now, I can listen to the radio, read a magazine and get slowly pissed. She’s much easier to listen to after a few glasses of white. I’m not even going to mention the butt cheek incident (I mean on here, not to my mother, that’s just weird, we’ve never discussed bum sex either, I always thought of my Dad as a pure meat and two veg man, I’m sure kinky sex for him was taking his socks off).