Thankfully our heating is back working and somehow working better than it ever has before. But receiving an email on Christmas Day from our monitoring service to say our heating system was ‘in alarm’ meant that we soon followed it into alarm mode too.

We weren’t at home, so like the monitoring service weren’t able to reboot the system. We didn’t know if it was on, or if we’d walk into a chilly house when we got back - as it turns out they were right it was in alarm, a bleeping alarm which I’m sure our neighbours were grateful that couldn’t be heard from outside.

But the house wasn’t cold, phew.

System reboot completed, and then another alarm. It wasn’t happy. We quickly learnt how to clear the alarm, which we soon discovered freed it up to alarm again.

Every 46 minutes.

After a full day and night of this and not a whole lot of sleep, we took another tack and just acknowledged the alarm which delayed its recurrence a bit. The monitoring team were able to tweak things a bit more and keep things (including the bleeping alarm) working. And then it stopped, and so did the heating.

Typically the engineer arrived when there was snow on the ground, and it was hard to know if it was warmer inside or out. He couldn’t resolve the issue that day, and needed to come back the next day, but the heating needed to stay off. It was clear at this point it was colder in the house, even with the fan heater we had, and the additional one we’d hastily bought. But they helped.

You know it’s cold when…

wearing three layers, including a thermal base layer, became our norm.
even I was wearing socks with my slippers (it’s not a feeling I enjoy, but needs must).
getting dressed became a study in efficiency - everything laid out first and put on in minimal time!
we planned our meals to be even more warming than usual, think soups and casseroles slow cooking in the oven.
we ate more quickly than we usually would, no leisurely meals - partly to get back into the warmer rooms, but also to eat our meals while they were still hot.
the same for cups of tea, it’s amazing how quickly a cuppa cools down.
my crocheted throws came into their own as sofa blankets, and the smaller ones as covers over our dining chairs - and even MOH was pleased to have them.
I found time to pull out my long-time ‘almost but not quite finished’ crochet project and got some more sewn together whilst snuggled underneath most of it. There’s still more to do though, some things don’t ever change.
we planned time out of the house, as often even just walking to the pub was warmer than being indoors.
everything in the house was cold, as well as warming the plates we were even warming our cutlery in the oven, and butter was a case of one slice, or two?
our bed became a Princess and the Pea in reverse kind of vibe, every few nights we’d add another cover to the top of the bed, which of course made it even harder to get up in the morning!

Our heating is now fixed, and it’s working better than it ever has

It took four visits to fix it though over an elapsed period of a month, the delay was mostly waiting for a part to be delivered, which of course turned out not to be the cause of it anyway. We weren’t without heating for all of this time - at most it was gone for a week and we had offers of staying with family if it got too cold. Mostly it was working, though with a severely reduced capacity, and we didn’t want to push our luck and be left with none!

You know you’ve got a good heating engineer when he brings his own indoor shoes

But, no offence, let’s hope we don’t need to see him, or his colleagues, until the the summer when the annual service is due.