Yesterday after the day before the day after a week last tuesday?
Thanks to puffdogdaddy for finding this on the BBC website...
It looks and feels like something out of "The Day After Tomorrow". Temperatures down to -20°c in towns and cities, colder in rural areas. That's -4°F in old money. I know that's not much compared to some places, but it's unusual for here. Apparently it's caused by a ridge of high pressure parked just to the West of the UK, which is diverting the normally mild air coming up of the North Atlantic up to the North. Instead we are getting cold air coming down from the North East.
Coldest winter for either 25, 40 or 100 years, depending upon whom you listen to.
Interestingly enough the climate change conference has dropped from the news like a car into a frozen lake! Seriously, who's going to believe in Global Warming at a time like this?
J Naylor puts it rather well in his comic Original Life.
On a more personal note, When I went to bed last night, I noticed one of the radiators was a bit cooler than normal. Didn't think anything of it, just thought "Oh, the thermostat probably shut the heating off". This morning, woke up feeling chilly, felt the rad in the bedroom and it was stone cold. Came downstairs, checked and the heating was on and the temperature was below the 'stat setting. Went out to look at the boiler and it wasn't working.
Checked and we had gas, checked we had water, then Connie wandered up the road and woke the landlord up. This is at about 6:30am. Now, if this had been our old landlord, he would probably have said something like "Okay, leave it with me", and then three days later we would have been ringing him in his nice warm house in the Seychelles somewhere to ask when he was going to fix it?
This guy, our current landlord, came round as soon as he was dressed, fiddled with the boiler, failed to get it working, and called a gas engineer to come over and fix it. The gas engineer was totally "snowed under" (pun intended) with work, but made it here this evening just as we got home.
Actually, Connie got home first, and saw the Landlord driving out as she was driving in. They stopped and he told her the engineer was just getting off the M4. I arrived just as Connie was opening the front door. We'd no sooner said hello when the engineer turned up. About ten minutes later, so did the landlord.
Well, after about half an hour, he managed to get it working, but the problem was that the boiler is a fan-assisted balanced flue boiler. In other words, it takes all it's air from outside, burns it and puts it back outside through a concentric pipe, which is assisted by a fan, and the fan had stopped working. He got it going some how and it sounded - to quote the landlord - "Like a bag of screwdrivers".
The landlord and the engineer went off to see a guy who lives locally who works for the company that makes the boiler, to see if he had a spare fan. Twenty minutes later they were back, and now our boiler not only works but is a hell of a lot quieter and probably a lot more efficient!
Landlord gets twelve out of ten, and the engineer nine out of ten (he ran down the battery on my rechargeable torch, should have had his own!)
But, all is well that ends well. We have heat and hot water again!
It looks and feels like something out of "The Day After Tomorrow". Temperatures down to -20°c in towns and cities, colder in rural areas. That's -4°F in old money. I know that's not much compared to some places, but it's unusual for here. Apparently it's caused by a ridge of high pressure parked just to the West of the UK, which is diverting the normally mild air coming up of the North Atlantic up to the North. Instead we are getting cold air coming down from the North East.
Coldest winter for either 25, 40 or 100 years, depending upon whom you listen to.
Interestingly enough the climate change conference has dropped from the news like a car into a frozen lake! Seriously, who's going to believe in Global Warming at a time like this?
J Naylor puts it rather well in his comic Original Life.
On a more personal note, When I went to bed last night, I noticed one of the radiators was a bit cooler than normal. Didn't think anything of it, just thought "Oh, the thermostat probably shut the heating off". This morning, woke up feeling chilly, felt the rad in the bedroom and it was stone cold. Came downstairs, checked and the heating was on and the temperature was below the 'stat setting. Went out to look at the boiler and it wasn't working.
Checked and we had gas, checked we had water, then Connie wandered up the road and woke the landlord up. This is at about 6:30am. Now, if this had been our old landlord, he would probably have said something like "Okay, leave it with me", and then three days later we would have been ringing him in his nice warm house in the Seychelles somewhere to ask when he was going to fix it?
This guy, our current landlord, came round as soon as he was dressed, fiddled with the boiler, failed to get it working, and called a gas engineer to come over and fix it. The gas engineer was totally "snowed under" (pun intended) with work, but made it here this evening just as we got home.
Actually, Connie got home first, and saw the Landlord driving out as she was driving in. They stopped and he told her the engineer was just getting off the M4. I arrived just as Connie was opening the front door. We'd no sooner said hello when the engineer turned up. About ten minutes later, so did the landlord.
Well, after about half an hour, he managed to get it working, but the problem was that the boiler is a fan-assisted balanced flue boiler. In other words, it takes all it's air from outside, burns it and puts it back outside through a concentric pipe, which is assisted by a fan, and the fan had stopped working. He got it going some how and it sounded - to quote the landlord - "Like a bag of screwdrivers".
The landlord and the engineer went off to see a guy who lives locally who works for the company that makes the boiler, to see if he had a spare fan. Twenty minutes later they were back, and now our boiler not only works but is a hell of a lot quieter and probably a lot more efficient!
Landlord gets twelve out of ten, and the engineer nine out of ten (he ran down the battery on my rechargeable torch, should have had his own!)
But, all is well that ends well. We have heat and hot water again!