As we forgive those that mutter platitudes to the wrong sky fairies,
(or the wrong platitudes to the right sky fairy).
My radio listening habits normally exclude any religious performances, as carefully as my televisual habits avoid soaps, but this morning I was caught out by the Christmas excess on Radio 4, and heard a blessing or two and what passes for the Lord's Prayer these days.
In my infancy, we were taught the Lord's Prayer, with the older words. We didn't understand all the words and we certainly didn't understand the full meaning. It passed for a mantra, some comforting words to be repeated while we could have otherwise been counting to 20. We came to realise that the local land-owners were not Christian, as they evidently had no intention of forgiving any trespassers; we perhaps learned that adults say things they can't explain, a God in three parts, and all the rest.
I am older now and much more cynical. The new words sound merely banal, but then I expect the entire service would have made the same impression.
I am an adult. I take responsibility for my own actions, I can construct a plausible explanation for the sum of time and chemistry producing intelligent life. There are enough mysteries, without believing in fairies. I cannot fathom the thoughts of friends and colleagues who profess religious belief.
Sunday 26 December 2010
Wednesday 15 December 2010
Are you feeling lucky?
Once again, the fake Austrian fir tree has descended from the loft, been unpacked and erected. Still in the loft are the twin set of white lights that were bought at the same time as the tree. In the dining room are the coloured lights that were bought 4 years ago to replace the increasingly unreliable white lights.
The coloured lights live in the box with the tree, neatly folded and packed in their original packaging. sliding off the plastic sleeve causes them to spring out, to tumble and tangle a bit. Then, the annual question; are you feeling lucky? To test the lights before decorating the tree or not? This year - not. They worked anyway. It made my day.
The coloured lights live in the box with the tree, neatly folded and packed in their original packaging. sliding off the plastic sleeve causes them to spring out, to tumble and tangle a bit. Then, the annual question; are you feeling lucky? To test the lights before decorating the tree or not? This year - not. They worked anyway. It made my day.
Saturday 27 November 2010
jewels by night and day
The front hedge is covered with berries, red berries that glow particularly brightly in the car brake-lights as I park in the evening. The number of berries in the back garden is rapidly diminishing under the onslaught of red-wings. As usual these bullies have chased off the resident black-birds, but they seem happy to share the lawn with them. Last week There were red-wings, black-birds and song-thrushes all on the lawn at the same time, while great and blue-tits explored the trees, chaffinches chased overhead and a robin skulked by the garage. Under the cover of an apple tree trunk, a greater spotted woodpecker was opening the bark on a pruned branch asthough it was zipped.
A collared dove and, a little later, a pidgeon, were chased out of the ash tree, apparently by a black-bird. Maybe this bird was feeling the frustration of being excluded from the holly and the hawthorn and taking it out on something more timid still.
I saw a female blackbird try a rosehip, but she didn't seem very impressed. I expect the roses will carry their jeweled fruits for a while longer.
A collared dove and, a little later, a pidgeon, were chased out of the ash tree, apparently by a black-bird. Maybe this bird was feeling the frustration of being excluded from the holly and the hawthorn and taking it out on something more timid still.
I saw a female blackbird try a rosehip, but she didn't seem very impressed. I expect the roses will carry their jeweled fruits for a while longer.
Thursday 25 November 2010
Getting lost
As a software engineer my work is occasionally immersive, involving, smothering, all-encompassing. Progress, progress at the rate demanded by timescales and complexity, forces me to hone my mind, to focus, to rebuild the conscious process into a machine that creates abstract phrases of algorithmic awe. The act of creation takes over the normal mental processes; emotion, humanity, are forced into the background. My personality is tempered into a brittle, multi-faceted glittering mechanism in which people can see their reflections from outside, but which they cannot penetrate, but get lost. The code, the data, the algorithms and their precise representations become my world. A fog descends over the real world and I cannot write except in strict syntax, my poetry is subsumed into stanzas of code; all parentheses and semi-colons. Only the brutal critique of the compiler and the patterned translation of the test cases can touch me. I fidget through the day, stabbing at keys and buttons, I whir in the night in place of sleep.
Creation. Let there be results.
Creation. Let there be results.
Tuesday 23 November 2010
autumn rushed
Autumn usually catches me in a regretful, but poetic mood. I normally wax lyrical about the colours, the heaps of leaves, the thinning of the canopy. Autumn came as a shock this year, since, having declared autumn just before half-term, we spent a week out of the country, and when we returned the leaves had turned. Instant autumn, and two weeks later, the majority of trees were near bare.
In the week after half-term I visited the custard maple to find that the lower leaves were about half turned to their characteristic yellow, the other half were fading from green still, the colour of spearmint leaves. The thinning crown was scattered with shades of oatmeal. Last week I sped past it blindly, only remembering when it was in the mirror, bare.
Beech and oak still cling, stubbornly, to leaves that are like a thin porridge. Other deciduous trees, like the birch, have gone into their winter sleep with just a few random remainders of their solar factories.
I walked out in the low sun of Sunday morning this week, across the green on a well built hoggin path that, although patchily wet, had not yet decided where the winter's puddles were going to form. The ditches held abandoned branches, pretending to be prehistoric monsters reaching up from the water, and mixed deciduous leaves the colour of dark chestnut. Across the lawn, ridges of collected leaves marked the extent of the streams' spate, now mostly returned between their banks. Drier pools of leaves were like crystalising fudge under their sleeping boughs.
In the week after half-term I visited the custard maple to find that the lower leaves were about half turned to their characteristic yellow, the other half were fading from green still, the colour of spearmint leaves. The thinning crown was scattered with shades of oatmeal. Last week I sped past it blindly, only remembering when it was in the mirror, bare.
Beech and oak still cling, stubbornly, to leaves that are like a thin porridge. Other deciduous trees, like the birch, have gone into their winter sleep with just a few random remainders of their solar factories.
I walked out in the low sun of Sunday morning this week, across the green on a well built hoggin path that, although patchily wet, had not yet decided where the winter's puddles were going to form. The ditches held abandoned branches, pretending to be prehistoric monsters reaching up from the water, and mixed deciduous leaves the colour of dark chestnut. Across the lawn, ridges of collected leaves marked the extent of the streams' spate, now mostly returned between their banks. Drier pools of leaves were like crystalising fudge under their sleeping boughs.
Thursday 11 November 2010
Blog blocking
For half-term holiday, the family went sailing in Greece. This was to make up for the lamentable failure to get away in the summer, since, by the time I had ceased to be busy at work, the weather had gone into its characteristic August decline, sufficiently to discourage us from packing a tent in the car and heading West, as we had planned.
The sailing idea was a whim that came about when someone thrust a brochure into my hands at the Southampton boat show. We sail dinghies generally, when the weather encourages it, but had hardly set foot on a yacht, except on a couple of days this year. We checked the T&Cs with growing incredulity that, these people were willing to let just anyone sail their craft, qualifications and certifications be damned.
I have to pause the sailing tale here to give praise for the brochure. It was not the floatilla sailing brochure that immediately caught my eye, but the bare-boat one. A brochure written by people who like having fun on boats, no lawyers, no marketing. The pictures did a good part of the selling too; somewhere warm, quiet, relaxing, clean, friendly. All the good impressions came across. Very sensibly, although they allow just anyone to sail, these folk do not let them out on their own with 60+ grand's worth of sailable glass and epoxy. Bare-boat hire requires a deposit and some sailing qualifications (more than the RYA II we have).
Investigating the available options left us with the idea of a week at half-term, which is anyway the last week of the season. At this point we didn't stop to question that the holiday price was not inflated for half-term, thoughts from the brochure bouyed us along and those friends we spoke to, who were familiar with the area and climate, all suggested that the weather at this time of year was generally good, mid 20's celsius and warm sea.
I will admit, that before we left this country, we were aware of the likely weather conditions in the Ionian sea when we arrived in Greece. There had been mention of storms and temperatures rather closer to 20 than we had hoped for. But, we do sail, we do understand that it is weather dependent. We are quite familiar with arriving at the sailing club to find that the wind is too fierce, or that it has dropped entirely, or that, on an ostensibly beautiful sunny day, there is a threat of storms hanging bleakly over the needles and threatening to flatten all boats in its way. We were frustrated though, having got up very early on the Sunday and arrived shortly after mid day in good weather, to have to wait almost 48 hours before setting out anywhere.
I think I'll dive right in with my central gripe here, everything else is peripheral. We understand weather, as I said, we undertand that the itinery is governed by what is possible in the worst conditions that can be construed from the forcast. What we did not understand is that the area is so crowded with floatillas, that finding a port that can contain one is like playing one of those 4 x 4 puzzle games in which there are 15 pieces all constrained to move in near synchrony. Not only were we constrained in our choice of destination, to ports considered safe in heavy weather, but also by everyone else in the sea, who were trying to do the same things. In fair weather of course, this situation does not arise; a full marina just means mooring round the bay and a longer row to the bar.
The immediate consequence of this was 46 hours in the harbour where we embarked, the corollary was that our first day in charge of anything longer than 16 feet on the water involved a journey that took 8 hours and involved rather more navigation than we had expected to undertake on our own. I must be fair and point out that we could have arrived much faster, but it being a sailing holiday, we took the approach of using the sails, which was probably mistaken, but is the solution, as dinghy sailors, that we naturally attempted. 20 miles (by the enthusiastic crow) or more, against the wind, was our first day and, on arrival, we were a bit emotional.
There, the tension is released,and now I can return to blogging calmly.
The sailing idea was a whim that came about when someone thrust a brochure into my hands at the Southampton boat show. We sail dinghies generally, when the weather encourages it, but had hardly set foot on a yacht, except on a couple of days this year. We checked the T&Cs with growing incredulity that, these people were willing to let just anyone sail their craft, qualifications and certifications be damned.
I have to pause the sailing tale here to give praise for the brochure. It was not the floatilla sailing brochure that immediately caught my eye, but the bare-boat one. A brochure written by people who like having fun on boats, no lawyers, no marketing. The pictures did a good part of the selling too; somewhere warm, quiet, relaxing, clean, friendly. All the good impressions came across. Very sensibly, although they allow just anyone to sail, these folk do not let them out on their own with 60+ grand's worth of sailable glass and epoxy. Bare-boat hire requires a deposit and some sailing qualifications (more than the RYA II we have).
Investigating the available options left us with the idea of a week at half-term, which is anyway the last week of the season. At this point we didn't stop to question that the holiday price was not inflated for half-term, thoughts from the brochure bouyed us along and those friends we spoke to, who were familiar with the area and climate, all suggested that the weather at this time of year was generally good, mid 20's celsius and warm sea.
I will admit, that before we left this country, we were aware of the likely weather conditions in the Ionian sea when we arrived in Greece. There had been mention of storms and temperatures rather closer to 20 than we had hoped for. But, we do sail, we do understand that it is weather dependent. We are quite familiar with arriving at the sailing club to find that the wind is too fierce, or that it has dropped entirely, or that, on an ostensibly beautiful sunny day, there is a threat of storms hanging bleakly over the needles and threatening to flatten all boats in its way. We were frustrated though, having got up very early on the Sunday and arrived shortly after mid day in good weather, to have to wait almost 48 hours before setting out anywhere.
I think I'll dive right in with my central gripe here, everything else is peripheral. We understand weather, as I said, we undertand that the itinery is governed by what is possible in the worst conditions that can be construed from the forcast. What we did not understand is that the area is so crowded with floatillas, that finding a port that can contain one is like playing one of those 4 x 4 puzzle games in which there are 15 pieces all constrained to move in near synchrony. Not only were we constrained in our choice of destination, to ports considered safe in heavy weather, but also by everyone else in the sea, who were trying to do the same things. In fair weather of course, this situation does not arise; a full marina just means mooring round the bay and a longer row to the bar.
The immediate consequence of this was 46 hours in the harbour where we embarked, the corollary was that our first day in charge of anything longer than 16 feet on the water involved a journey that took 8 hours and involved rather more navigation than we had expected to undertake on our own. I must be fair and point out that we could have arrived much faster, but it being a sailing holiday, we took the approach of using the sails, which was probably mistaken, but is the solution, as dinghy sailors, that we naturally attempted. 20 miles (by the enthusiastic crow) or more, against the wind, was our first day and, on arrival, we were a bit emotional.
There, the tension is released,and now I can return to blogging calmly.
Friday 22 October 2010
Three scrapes
I assumed, from gazing down my garden from the kitchen window this morning, that the overnight temperatures had avoided negative numbers. The last two days have presented window ice on the car and, on Wednesday, it was quite tough stuff, or perhaps my ice chipping muscles have atrophied over the summer. I was surprised then, when trying to wipe the water from my car before coming to work, to find that the water was ice. Fortunately it was more like soft sugar icing this morning and only required a vigorous rub.
With the sun out, and the weather dry, and a few spare minutes for the journey, I took the opportunity to pass the custard maple on my way today. I slowed down to get a good look into its canopy, to see if it was doing its usual seasonal colour change. I think this year that the lower leaves may turn to custard, but in the upper branches there are signs of marmalade streaking.
The maple route, the longer route to work, takes me along one of my favourite local driving roads, across the forest. As the bracken browns and curls and the deciduous leaves fall, the sight-lines on this road improve, making it safer to drive fast and with a little attitude. On a dry day the bends and climbs sweep together into a short symphony of motion. The road was clear of leaves and so it was only clouds of chaffinches that were swept up as I barrelled along, with a smile. A few squirrels played chicken, the ponies kept, largely, out of the way and the deer, if there were any, remained invisible. My usual route has been scattered with pheasant this week, and a lone quail has always been on the verge, but I saw none this morning.
The trees are still partly clothed, the colours not yet fully turned, and yet, already winter is creeping in. Northerly winds blow harshly from Arctic latitudes. Only the sun's elevation betrays the weather as autumnal, rather than the coldest season.
With the sun out, and the weather dry, and a few spare minutes for the journey, I took the opportunity to pass the custard maple on my way today. I slowed down to get a good look into its canopy, to see if it was doing its usual seasonal colour change. I think this year that the lower leaves may turn to custard, but in the upper branches there are signs of marmalade streaking.
The maple route, the longer route to work, takes me along one of my favourite local driving roads, across the forest. As the bracken browns and curls and the deciduous leaves fall, the sight-lines on this road improve, making it safer to drive fast and with a little attitude. On a dry day the bends and climbs sweep together into a short symphony of motion. The road was clear of leaves and so it was only clouds of chaffinches that were swept up as I barrelled along, with a smile. A few squirrels played chicken, the ponies kept, largely, out of the way and the deer, if there were any, remained invisible. My usual route has been scattered with pheasant this week, and a lone quail has always been on the verge, but I saw none this morning.
The trees are still partly clothed, the colours not yet fully turned, and yet, already winter is creeping in. Northerly winds blow harshly from Arctic latitudes. Only the sun's elevation betrays the weather as autumnal, rather than the coldest season.
Tuesday 19 October 2010
No crumbs
I know it was one of my children. The missing circle of paper was too far from the edge. One perfect sheet of white A4, with a circle missing, the size of a mug-ring, for what purpose I can only guess.
The sheet caught my eye on Wednesday evening, lying on the oak dining table, when I came home from playing badminton and, I shrugged. What else to do, they'll learn better when they have to buy their own paper, I think.
And then my attention moved to a light snack, a drink, to bed. The paper didn't reconnect with my consciousness until the following morning. On my way from the kitchen, my eye was caught, a biscuit!
The grain of the dark wood took on the perfect disguise of a wire-cooked biscuit base, as though illuminated from one side. The illusion was enhanced because it is not all together unusual to find an occasional forgotten digestive biscuit lying on the dining table, abandoned when some other (usually electronic) distraction called.
Eldest son walked by, preparing to leave for school. "Do you want a biscuit?" I asked cheerily, nodding at the table. His hand reached out, hesitated with six inches to go, he laughed. Then we tried it out on middle son; he saw through it more quickly, I suspect because it was he who had cut the circle in the first place.
Knowing the illusion was there was little protection, for the rest of the morning until we went out, everyone glanced at the biscuit as they walked through the room, doing an amused double-take each time.
The sheet caught my eye on Wednesday evening, lying on the oak dining table, when I came home from playing badminton and, I shrugged. What else to do, they'll learn better when they have to buy their own paper, I think.
And then my attention moved to a light snack, a drink, to bed. The paper didn't reconnect with my consciousness until the following morning. On my way from the kitchen, my eye was caught, a biscuit!
The grain of the dark wood took on the perfect disguise of a wire-cooked biscuit base, as though illuminated from one side. The illusion was enhanced because it is not all together unusual to find an occasional forgotten digestive biscuit lying on the dining table, abandoned when some other (usually electronic) distraction called.
Eldest son walked by, preparing to leave for school. "Do you want a biscuit?" I asked cheerily, nodding at the table. His hand reached out, hesitated with six inches to go, he laughed. Then we tried it out on middle son; he saw through it more quickly, I suspect because it was he who had cut the circle in the first place.
Knowing the illusion was there was little protection, for the rest of the morning until we went out, everyone glanced at the biscuit as they walked through the room, doing an amused double-take each time.
Tuesday 12 October 2010
symbolic scarf
The core of the house, the part we all use, had an artificial warmth this morning. Peripherals were chilled by the night air still as I moved around, finding breakfast and restoring order to piles of paper disturbed by passing children.
On Sunday we swam, or at least paddled deeply, in the sea. Waves shot cool salt spray over our heads, but the sun was warm. In the lee of the cliff, on the rocks, we soaked up sun like reptiles; spreading ourselves perpendicular to the rays.
Ths morning, sponging the dew from the car windows, it felt different. A corner has been turned in the year and to mark this, I wore a scarf. The trees, where they are exposed to flows of cool, already show seasonal colour changes. Occasional boughs are marked with yellow in the oaks and chestnuts, maples have turned to glowing fiery balls, flickering where the sun reflects of wet, turned foliage.
The first day of autumn.
On Sunday we swam, or at least paddled deeply, in the sea. Waves shot cool salt spray over our heads, but the sun was warm. In the lee of the cliff, on the rocks, we soaked up sun like reptiles; spreading ourselves perpendicular to the rays.
Ths morning, sponging the dew from the car windows, it felt different. A corner has been turned in the year and to mark this, I wore a scarf. The trees, where they are exposed to flows of cool, already show seasonal colour changes. Occasional boughs are marked with yellow in the oaks and chestnuts, maples have turned to glowing fiery balls, flickering where the sun reflects of wet, turned foliage.
The first day of autumn.
Sunday 10 October 2010
warm feelings
My central heating system and I have come to know each other quite well over the 15 years we have been together. At first, our relationship was rather distant, but over the years I feel we have become friends.
In the early years, whenever the house was at the wrong temperature, we would be in conflict. "Winter again and the heating is on the blink; if only we had had a descent heating system installed by someone competent,..." etc. I even resorted, in this early phase, to bringing in "experts", who would wave their magic spanners, replace a part or two and leave me with warm accommodation and a hefty bill, but I eventually learnt my lesson and decided to apply my engineering brain to the problem of simple binary logic, albeit operating at 240V.
In these early years the problems were due to component infant-failures, to earlier poor maintenance and, frankly, to a barely adequate installation. I must be fair on the installer here and point out that the boiler was added to two, combined heating circuits that had been cobbled together by the house's previous owner. The boiler fitted is a Glowworm condensing boiler, and it is the heating element in an otherwise conventional fully pumped, unpressurised system. Such installations are required, by the manufacturer's rules, to include a bypass circuit to accept the overpressure from the pump in the event that all the heating circuit parallel radiator valves are turned off. The fitted circuit, being a little short (i.e. low in copper content) has always made the boiler short-cycle, which is not an efficient mode for a condensing boiler.
Over our years together I have corrected a number of amusing failures, but left this bypass circuit alone. I have replaced the flue fan unit, the over-temperature cut-off thermostat, the hot water thermostat, the pump and the motorised valve, this latter item, several times. I have also cleaned the burner and the main boiler circuit board which, over time, accumulates enough conductive dust to prevent the effective operation of the flame ignition (there being no pilot light). I have even rebuilt a couple of valve motors from the working components of multiple failed units to correct burnt out resistors and failing micro-switches, but unfortunately Honeywell have now changed the design subtly, and the new parts and the old no-longer fully interwork.
In order to avoid doing repairs in bad weather I have also run the heating for extended periods with string holding the 2-way valve manual override active or with the heating on continuously so that the pump ran 24/7, since it had lost the will to start itself, once it had stopped.
The reason I claim that the heating system is getting to know me, as well as the converse, is that last winter it worked trouble free throughout the coldest spell of weather, when I was at my busiest doing other things, whereas in previous years, it would have taken such opportunities to break down on me.
Knowing that some amount of maintenance was going to be essential this year, I ran the heating with the temperature still positively balmy outdoors, I listened carefully to all the components, ran my hand over all of the pipes and determined that the only problems this year, to add to the ongoing fault in one of the pump isolation valves, that necessitates the partial draining of the system in order to do any pump maintenance work, were:
So I ordered a new pump and, while I was admiring Screfix's online site, I noticed, while searching for valves, that they had a reasonably priced bypass valve for my ever leaky bypass circuit. These items arrived swiftly and, while all was disassembled I had time to clean the circuit board in the boiler, diagnose the 2-way valve problem (mechanism worn out beyond repair) and determine the type of the back-up battery in the Honeywell programmer. I ordered the valve motor (and a valve, the price was essentially the same with as without) from someone on ebay. The battery was harder to source, because the original was obselete, a Varta V110H. I found a company called Cell Pack Solutions on the web, but their website said a replacement cell, a 1V150H, was out of stock and to call. I called on the Monday and explained my problems. They were willing, for under a fiver (5 pounds sterling) to get a compatible cell out of stock, attach the required 3 pins to it, package it, post it and accept a credit card; an excellent and polite service.
So now, with all of these parts fitted and commissioned I have a warm feeling about my relationship with my heating system, although I am realistic. I know it could all break down again soon.
Incidentally, in these cost and carbon dioxide conscious times, I also bought us a joint present of a programmable room thermostat, but I haven't got around to fitting that yet, I let the rest of the components get to know each other first.
In the early years, whenever the house was at the wrong temperature, we would be in conflict. "Winter again and the heating is on the blink; if only we had had a descent heating system installed by someone competent,..." etc. I even resorted, in this early phase, to bringing in "experts", who would wave their magic spanners, replace a part or two and leave me with warm accommodation and a hefty bill, but I eventually learnt my lesson and decided to apply my engineering brain to the problem of simple binary logic, albeit operating at 240V.
In these early years the problems were due to component infant-failures, to earlier poor maintenance and, frankly, to a barely adequate installation. I must be fair on the installer here and point out that the boiler was added to two, combined heating circuits that had been cobbled together by the house's previous owner. The boiler fitted is a Glowworm condensing boiler, and it is the heating element in an otherwise conventional fully pumped, unpressurised system. Such installations are required, by the manufacturer's rules, to include a bypass circuit to accept the overpressure from the pump in the event that all the heating circuit parallel radiator valves are turned off. The fitted circuit, being a little short (i.e. low in copper content) has always made the boiler short-cycle, which is not an efficient mode for a condensing boiler.
Over our years together I have corrected a number of amusing failures, but left this bypass circuit alone. I have replaced the flue fan unit, the over-temperature cut-off thermostat, the hot water thermostat, the pump and the motorised valve, this latter item, several times. I have also cleaned the burner and the main boiler circuit board which, over time, accumulates enough conductive dust to prevent the effective operation of the flame ignition (there being no pilot light). I have even rebuilt a couple of valve motors from the working components of multiple failed units to correct burnt out resistors and failing micro-switches, but unfortunately Honeywell have now changed the design subtly, and the new parts and the old no-longer fully interwork.
In order to avoid doing repairs in bad weather I have also run the heating for extended periods with string holding the 2-way valve manual override active or with the heating on continuously so that the pump ran 24/7, since it had lost the will to start itself, once it had stopped.
The reason I claim that the heating system is getting to know me, as well as the converse, is that last winter it worked trouble free throughout the coldest spell of weather, when I was at my busiest doing other things, whereas in previous years, it would have taken such opportunities to break down on me.
Knowing that some amount of maintenance was going to be essential this year, I ran the heating with the temperature still positively balmy outdoors, I listened carefully to all the components, ran my hand over all of the pipes and determined that the only problems this year, to add to the ongoing fault in one of the pump isolation valves, that necessitates the partial draining of the system in order to do any pump maintenance work, were:
- The pump, in addition to not wanting to start, did not run reliably.
- The boiler did not reliably light.
- The 2-way valve had something wrong, because it did not return to central when the heating demand was off.
- The programmer's back-up battery was shagged, allowing it to forget any programming information if it lost power for ten or more seconds.
So I ordered a new pump and, while I was admiring Screfix's online site, I noticed, while searching for valves, that they had a reasonably priced bypass valve for my ever leaky bypass circuit. These items arrived swiftly and, while all was disassembled I had time to clean the circuit board in the boiler, diagnose the 2-way valve problem (mechanism worn out beyond repair) and determine the type of the back-up battery in the Honeywell programmer. I ordered the valve motor (and a valve, the price was essentially the same with as without) from someone on ebay. The battery was harder to source, because the original was obselete, a Varta V110H. I found a company called Cell Pack Solutions on the web, but their website said a replacement cell, a 1V150H, was out of stock and to call. I called on the Monday and explained my problems. They were willing, for under a fiver (5 pounds sterling) to get a compatible cell out of stock, attach the required 3 pins to it, package it, post it and accept a credit card; an excellent and polite service.
So now, with all of these parts fitted and commissioned I have a warm feeling about my relationship with my heating system, although I am realistic. I know it could all break down again soon.
Incidentally, in these cost and carbon dioxide conscious times, I also bought us a joint present of a programmable room thermostat, but I haven't got around to fitting that yet, I let the rest of the components get to know each other first.
Tuesday 5 October 2010
I have resisted blogging these many years
I have, however kept an infrequent journal on the h2g2 site. What do you mean you never heard of it? That is the whole problem, h2g2 seems to be dying. I stopped journalling there because I cannot be confident that the content will persist. Perhaps I'll try to import from there one day, but for now, there are new rambles only.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)