Old boilers, new boilers and knocking down walls

It was alleged that the boiler and hot water tank were all in fine fettle, I even received an in-date safety certificate with all of the house paperwork. Theoretically, we should have been able to be toasty warm, and have lovely hot water, as soon as we moved in. It transpired that there was as much chance of that happening, as there was Prince Phillip visiting a foreign country and not casually insulting every aspect of the culture!

The water in the house was either painfully cold, or absolutely scalding hot (only a couple of taps worked also, but that's another story). The heating was the same, you couldn't touch the radiators without being scorched and for some reason they came on when you tried to get any hot water (not good for a woman of a certain age I can tell you)! When the boiler was 'working' it made a horrendous screeching and rumbling noise, and the flame would often just wither and die out. It actually really scared me, I had visions of the house exploding and the only thing being left standing was the wall that had the boiler rammed into it. Or us just not waking up one day, like those dreadful stories you hear about in cheap, badly maintained holiday complexes. The boiler was in the kitchen, it was VERY rusty and the flue hole was crumbling and letting in water around it. Upstairs in Barry White's sauna room there was an immersion tank. this just plain didn't work, dead as a Dodo. I had thought that perhaps we could exist with this system for a year or so, but I quickly realised there was no way we could safely live like this. I was worried the boys would scald themselves, and I really didn't want to have to wash my hair in cold water for a year! We managed like this for three months into the winter, and I received the biggest fuel bill I've ever had. I snapped, and decided we would get a combi boiler and have it moved upstairs in the bathroom. 

I called one of the big gas companies to have a chat about trading in my old boiler for new. The types of 'fantastic' offers they are always pushing on the radio or TV. They quoted me £9K, whaaaaa...how can that be???!!! We then met a 'far more fantastic' local plumber who came and looked at the boiler we had...just on the off chance it could be repaired. He took the front off to look at it and it fell apart in his hands, promptly dropped out of the wall and leaked rusty sludge all over him. That was that....the boiler was condemned! Despite this he quoted me just shy of £5K, Still high, but I could do that at a stretch and I would much rather pay someone local who had good recommendations, than some mega corporate thief! I also realised that there was no way that boiler could ever have had a safety certificate from a reputable plumber, so I'm not sure how they forged that! 

Our local plumber installed a beautiful new combi boiler (I called her Belinda boiler), moved it upstairs for us, and bricked up the hole from the previous rust bucket. It was a lot of work to install, as we had micro bore pipes. Luckily they held and all was well. It was bliss! We still only had a few working taps, a crap bath and no shower, but we had access to normal temperature hot water, and a beautiful, quiet, sleek new boiler... I felt like a princess!!!

By replacing the hot water and heating system with a combi boiler, it made the hot water tank defunct (well, more defunct than before). This gave us the opportunity to generate more space, so we decided to knock Barry White's sauna room through to the bathroom. Creating one much larger bathroom space. The twins had their first DIY sledgehammer & crowbar experience that day. I don't think they could quite believe that they were allowed to just lay in to a wall and demolish it...THEY LOVED IT! I was finding bits of wall for weeks after.

As usual all the building rubble and useless plumbing bits and pieces ended up lying about in the garden for weeks, before we eventually moved it to the garage dumping ground. On closer inspection I suspect that boiler was deadly. It was a very expensive, but very wise choice to evict it quickly from the cottage. 

The condemned boiler - note the hole in the plaster at the top of the boiler and the rust!

Grandad overseeing the demolition of the wall