Well, here we are, or rather here I am, sitting at my desk in my old job, twiddling my thumbs with little to do at the moment. All job functions, meeting responsibilities and staff issues have been divested amongst a number of other staff within the plant. The feeling of being about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike spring to mind. I would rather be at home packing up the cases and putting all the other stuff into boxes ready for the storage run on Tuesday next week.
The central heating packed up yesterday, just as Scotland hit -18 Celsius. Fortunately down here on the South coast it didn't get as cold, maybe around -2 at worst. The duvet was up round my neck for most of the night. I got woken in the early hours with a noise that sounded like a hammer drill on tin plate. Running around in the buff, (hold that thought!) I found the noise was coming from the airing cupboard. This is the same cupboard which caused much concern around 12 months ago, when we had the flood from the leaky washer on the heating system. I located the noise behind the control panel, found a screwdriver and whipped it off. Two circuit boards were visible, one to drive the central heating pump and one to set a delay time to continue running the pump to ensure that any residual hot water is taken away from the heat exchanger in the boiler. It was this timer circuit which was rattling like a maracas. Removal of the circuit was straightforward enough, and further investigation showed it to have few components built into a single sided PCB. £7.50 at most I thought, given my 25 years experience of such things. Tracking the part down on the Net proved me wrong - that will be £90 of your finest English pounds please - not including VAT or postage & packing! WTF? This is another reason why we have decided to leave rip-off Britain. Everyone is out to make the proverbial buck!
I gave the offending item to one of my maintenance engineers at work, and he replaced the relay, but it turns out there is a transistor which controls the input into the relay, and this has gone up the Swanee! Guess what - no markings to indicate type, or rating. Typical! Some out the box thinking later, and he came up with a single solid state timer DIN rail mounted unit which will do the trick. £3.50 to you sir! Seems to have done the trick. I am glad however, that this didn't happen when the new tenants who rent the property from us moved in. I suspect a call-out and charges would have been into the hundreds!
E-tickets have been confirmed, bank accounts have been opened, other than a local Korean one, passports in order, wills written (Mum, your an official executor as well as PA and post lady!)
Sue is in the Midlands doing her official farewell tour, and I join her on Saturday just for the weekend. We are going over for lunch on Sunday with my two, Lauren and Kyle to say goodbye. Alex is coming back down with us to act as Sherpa and general gofer, as my back is giving me gyp - probably due to stressing out a bit.
More as the days pass, and event s take over
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment