(no subject)

[galadhir]

On very bad news: my belly dance teacher, Elizabeth, popped over to the Middle East to get some dancing in during the half term holiday, and she is now trapped there thanks to the war. We suggested she find the embassy and let them know she's there but that's all we've heard, so none of us know what's happening beyond that. Some prayers for her safety would not come amiss if anyone reading this has a prayer list :(

On slightly better news, DH and I are having a heat pump put in, to run our central heating, instead of the gas boiler we previously had. And when I say 'we're having a heat pump put in' I mean right now. One engineer is outside drilling something. One is putting sticky back plastic over our carpets to protect them, prior to checking which radiators need to be replaced.

(Apparently we need larger radiators because the water coming from the heat pump will be at a lower temperature than that coming from a boiler, so we'll need a larger surface area of radiator to provide equivalent heating.)

We were keen to get a heat pump because we are with an electricity provider who get all their electricity from renewables (mostly wind farms around here.) That way, once we swap our gas hob for an electric one, we will be freed from fossil fuel use except for the cars. (They're on the plan too, but second hand electric cars are not yet as available as we need, and who can afford a new car?)

I'm very impressed with our electricity people so far (Octopus Electric.) They said they'd be here by 8am and they were here at 8.10am. (In contrast to the scaffolding people who said they'd be here yesterday and never turned up at all.)

They're putting protectors on our carpeting where they intend to walk. They say it will take them three days to install the heat pump system, but we'll only have one day without heating. And they have given us three fan heaters to keep us warm on that one day, and told us we can keep them afterward.

It'll be hard to go back to a system where you have to heat up the hot water tank in order to have hot water, (rather than the current system where the boiler heats the water on demand.) But we're doing our bit for the planet, so that will have to be the consolation :)

Comments

[sunshine304]

I already read that Elizabeth returned safely so that's awesome news! So many people are currently stuck in the region... :(

My parents also got a heat pump uhhh... last year? The year before? Their oil heater was 30 years old by then and started having more and more problems. They also needed to get new radiators - I did get the same ones even though my house still runs on oil (the heater was almost new as the old one broke down a few years before my grandma's death and she didn't have the money for a whole new heating system, so a new oil one it was) because then the change sometime in the future to a heat pump or whatever will be easier. But those radiators are absolute shit for cats - my late Bonnie got stuck with his toes two times and now I have some mesh wire over them to prevent it. That was quite annoying as it's almost impossible to get the wire to stay in place, but I found a way that seems to be working so far. I guess no-one in the radiator inventing group has cats...

Anyway, yay for getting the heat pump and for having a great company to install them! Hope everything went smoothly!

[galadhir]

Oh, I hadn't even thought about cats when looking at the new radiators except for thinking that cats might like to lie on top of them. I hadn't thought that their feet could get caught. Fortunately we don't have cats, but we'll have to be careful if my daughter is visiting with hers. (Which sometimes happens at Christmas.) You would have thought that someone would invent radiator caps for them in that case. Maybe you can patent your wire caps instead?

We are now installed and warm. It's great :)

[sunshine304]

Oh yes they definitely like to lie on the radiators, on the old ones, too. And if they move around on them carefully, it's fine. But my Bonnie tried to turn around and run away while he was on them and so he got stuck, just by the way they're constructed.

Many people also put wire over the old radiators as cats sometimes got stuck in them, too. Mine never did, though. Perhaps that was lucky and I was just very unlucky with Bonnie and the new ones, who knows. It was much easier with the old radiators as you could take off the top grate and put the wire beneath. That doesn't work with the new ones. :/

Yay for having a nice warm house! :D

[galadhir]

I hope he was okay? That sounds like it could have been grim.

I've not yet got over how nice it is to be warm again. In fact we are concerned that we are a little too warm and the hot water is a little too hot. But the engineer is back tomorrow and can help us tune it down a bit then :)

[sunshine304]

Yeah, he was okay then though my arms and hands weren't and I did a little trip to the hospital to get an antibiotics shot, just in case. XD

There's always a bit of adjusting with new heating but I'm sure that's easy to correct.

[galadhir]

Well done for catching him before he damaged himself, even at the cost of your poor arms!