Heating and a beautiful hob!

It has been two weeks now since we joined the modern world of central heating.  When we moved in 6 months ago, the plumber came round to look at the boiler - which hasn't worked since we got here - and said "Well, at least it's mid-summer and not mid-winter"!  We laughed at the time, but I really should have pressed him further.  He left with a chuckle and said that he would look up the boiler, because no-one seemed to know what to do with this industrial-sized monster machine that we had in our boiler cupboard.

 Well, September and October rolled on and still no heating!  Other plumbers came and went, perplexed and defeated and eventually our own trusted plumber came back and gave us heating!  Meanwhile, we wore woolly hats and borrowed oiled-filled radiators for the duration of chilly autumn mornings.  No more grumpy grown-ups and we can peel off some of the many blankets we put on the kids' beds.  The saga is not completely over: as soon as we got heating, the element for our water-heater in the kitchen gave up; Leo put a plastic bag on a hot electric hob (curtains for the hob); and we got fed-up of using a weak top oven at 230c for all our food!

Now - apart from underfloor heating in the new section of the house, and hot water in the kitchen - we are fully equipped with boiling radiators and a very smart oven and hob - all ready for Christmas!



No need to visit an Ice Hotel in Iceland now, although it is one of my ambitions in life!  We did, however, go for a more local adventure over half-term to the eco-sustainability centre in the South Downs to stay in a yurt!  As one friend commented: at least you will have a wood-burning stove and some heat!  Little did she know...we were ignorant too of the fact that yurts are actually quite large and the wood burner was just not powerful enough.

So, we waited for the jacked potatoes to cook (which they never did), and shivering in sleeping bags while our dog helpfully barked every time he heard someone walk by outside!  That certainly made us appreciate our house made of bricks, even if without heat.