Seriously freezing weather

It's been freezing for the last couple of days. Last night and tonight the termometer outside my house window showed -22 C/-7 F. Hopefully tonight's the last night of such a freaking cold because I have to keep the central heating on for hours and I hate to think how much it is going to cost. I'm really pissed off by those temperatures.

A bit of a cold

I've been walking around with a slight headache all day yesterday and today. I have pain behind my eyes, so I think my frontal sinuses are slightly inflamed. Whenever I catch a cold, it always goes to those sinuses first. I am taking acetaminophen, drinking raspberry tea with honey and keeping myself warm. I hope it will go away in one or two days.

The past week has been a bit warmer, never below OC/32F, and I haven't switched on the central heating even once. I keep using my tile stove instead. The French door between the room with the stove and my bedroom remains open. If I start the fire in the afternoon, by late evening, after two or three loads of wood, my bedroom gets reasonably warm. By which I mean 14C/57F. I cover myself with several woolen and cotton blankets, as well as wear woolen an cotton socks, and I have no problem staying warm throughout the night.

Whenever the temperature outside falls below freezing, though, I do switch on the central heating because the apartment gets really cold. I try to warm it up for the evening by having the heat on for about 60-90 minutes, when I sit at the PC or watch TV. The temperature in the room raises to 16C/60F. Then I switch the heat off and go to bed. The temperature remains in mid 50s when I wake up.

My present cold has nothing to do with the relatively low temps around my house, by the way, I caught it outside while planting tulips.

The plumber's gone again

I am not crazy about this guy, for two reasons. One, when he doesn't know how to do something he keeps experimenting, at the expense of at least my time. Two, when he cannot show up, he doesn't call, he just doesn't show up. For two weeks. Even after I call him to make another appointment, he also ignores that one. Then he gives me a one day notice that he will show up between noon and 1 p.m. on the following day, and shows up one to two hours late.

That has been our story this month.

When he finally showed up today, I was already mad because he was late, so I didn't talk to him much. He didn't like that because he likes company. I also did not help him drain water from the system so he had to run upstairs from the basement with buckets of water and back all by himself. He took four hours to complete the job that he's left to complete over a month ago.

He insisted on installing an additional pipe at the entry to the safety tank to prevent the effect of draining most of the system when the tank overflows. It didn't help. So he called some engineer acquaintance of his, only to learn that overflowing was caused by the general very large diameter of pipes leading to radiators, and no matter how much additional piping he installed around the safety tank, the system would drain through it if too much water was added too fast. Which was what I told him to begin with but he wouldn't listen. (See after he was gone last time I did my own experiment and added water to the system slowly, cup by cup, and it only overflowed by a controlled couple of drops instead of draining itself through the tank.) So now I have a safety tank with a redundant pipe on the system which functions exactly as it did, i.e. has to be filled slowly. (In the pic, the silver pipe below the tank is not required - the white pipe should be connected directly to the tank, preferably - to keep it looking neat - to its bottom right side.)

Luckily, he has restored the safety tank to its correct placement within the system, i.e. right next to the boiler and attached to the pipe through which hot water enters the system.

I decided to ignore the redundant pipe on the tank for today because I still wasn't feeling well and I wanted him to leave. It's not very big and I'll have to build a drywall cover around the tank anyway. If I can't live with it, I'll call him in a couple of days to come back and straighten it up.

To end on a positive note, he also changed two malfunctioning release valves on the radiators in my apartment so now all they are all air-free and fully operative. Nothing more is waiting to be fixed - I am fully prepared for the winter. ... read more

The plumber's left for now

He had no trouble whatsoever filling up all the pipes by simply installing a small pump next to the boiler. The pump will have to stay there. He said if I plan to move water through all the radiators by sole means of gravity, I'll generate huge heating bills, because the water is obviously having problems flowing through the system all by itself. So I decided to buy that pump from him on the spot. It is second hand but practically new, and half price of a new one - not a bad deal. He's not finished yet, still has to change release valves on some radiators, but will only be able to show up again in about ten days. However, I can already heat the house if I want to, everything works, let's say, 90% perfectly.

I estimate the cost of installing the boiler and starting the whole system again will exceed 50% of the cost of the boiler. Which was not cheap to begin with - although a simple model and therefore one of the cheapest boilers available on the market. I could have paid at least twice as much for one.. so actually I'm saving. Still, it's a major expense.

Fixing central heating...

I am trying to fix the central heating before winter arrives. Unfortunately, I had to change the boiler because the old one started seriously leaking last winter. Now I am having problems getting the whole system functioning. That is, the new boiler works all right but I cannot seem to force water into a majority of the radiators. Apparently, the system somehow drained itself through the holes in the old boiler and the radiators are now full of air. It isn't being properly released - hopefully due to their malfunctioning relief valves and not something more serious, such as obstructed pipes - which stops water from entering them.

I am having a plumber over tomorrow first thing in the morning to work on this. It's going to be his third visit.. During the first two visits he installed the boiler and made two attempts to fill the system with water, without any success. The water kept overflowing through the safety tank before the system was less than a half full. Initially, he thought the placement of the safety tank was causing this, so he experimented changing it. To an incorrect one, by the way, luckily it didn't make any difference, so tomorrow he's putting it back where it should be, i.e. where the hot water enters the system - instead of where the cooled water returns to the boiler, as he has it installed now. Then he's going to release the air from the radiators and try to fill the system up again. I sincerely hope he's finished around noon. In fact, he certainly will be because he's attending a wedding in the afternoon. No way he can miss that.. not his own wedding but he's truly a family man and will always put such social occasions before work.

I am wishing myself luck before his visit.
... read more