fun and games with boilers...

[scottyman]

Well, my boiler decided to give up the ghost on Sunday morning, called up the 24 hour service "hotline" to get an engineer out... but turns out they don't offer a 24 hour callout service anymore, just a recorded message saying "I'm sorry, there's nobody here right now, please leave a message and we might eventually get around to calling you"
NICE!
in the meantime, I'm freezing cold, sitting on my couch in a sleeping bag, with gallons of water flooding my kitchen and a pile of black pipe gunk in my sink.
Call up the maintennance arm of my lettings agents, who (as I found out 5 minutes ago, when somebody finally decided to come into the office) no longer have people working weekends, and of course, the woman who I have outside hours contact details for - has left the company.
Apparently someone will be here to look at it for 2 minutes, and say - "Looks like it stuffed mate - don't have the parts to repair it, and even if we did, couldn't be arsed anyway"
At which point I will no doubt have to call the agents, who will say "We'll have to get quotes from alternate suppliers, lose the paperwork, and pretend we never got your call in the first place" before eventually getting around to fixing it, when summer eventually rolls around.
Loadsa fun!

[5lab]

in circumstances like this you are legally entitled to call out an emergency serviceman if your agents are unavailable - ie if you get a burst pipe you can call out an emergency plummer and if your boiler breaks you can get an emergency gas dude round..

incidentally.. i've not yet had to turn the heating on in my flat.. recon the guys below us must have theirs up well high - cos our place is always supercosy...

[scottyman]

well, the real classic is that I've just been told that I should've called the emergency contact number which is on their voicemail system. just called to check - and there is no emergency contact number!

[scottyman]

what a relief... sorted in under half an hour... jammed release valve - filled with crud. all the water going into the system was going straight into the overflow, and there was bugger all water in the pipes. kept emptying itself all over the bench, as voila - the overflow pipe was disconnected. nice!

[Skii]

Well my hot water gave up the ghost last week, we called our landlord who got a plumber to come out the next day, he identified the problem as being the motorised valve which wasn't switching the flow of water between the central heating and the hot water system properly (we can only get heating, no hot water)

So he comes over and changes the motor on the valve, not the valve itself because that would involve more work as he'd need to drain the system to change the valve, so consequently we STILL have the same problem and still have no hot water.

So Saturday morning, the electric shower dies with a characteristic burning smell...cue sense of humour failure. No plumber available, no landlord.

Sod it - I went to B+Q and bought another shower for £100, and spent saturday afternoon installing it, made a pretty good job of it if i do say so

So, I'm billing my landlord for the shower, and still waiting for that damn plumber in the meantime

Ain't life grand

nice shower though...