A cold snap

My central heating is not working. In case I might forget this slight diversion from modern comfortable living, Mother Nature, in all her climate changing turmoil, amidst all the talk of global warming and Britain becoming developing a Mediterranean climate, has decided to cause snow to fall overnight.

Plumbing is no where near my strong point of household maintenance. Apart from cutting wood reasonably accurately and joining the same with a lower level of skill, plumbing is a horror show. The only plumbing job I can do well and with some knowledge and confidence is bleeding the radiators.

I mention this because having discovered the water pressure falling frequently in the boiler, air in the system may be contributing. Bleeding the radiators, or rads as we plumbers call them, may solve or eliminate the cause of the problem.

My strategy was this. I will ring the heating engineer. I found his number but felt that one of his initial questions after I had described the boiler behaviour would be about my having bled the radiators. One more check would do no harm. The radiator key was at hand which was an immediate bonus. I single handed must have kept radiator key manufacture going for years. Radiator keys are like elephants when they die – they go away, never to be seen again. But not at this moment.

Off I went turning and tightening, armed with a towel to catch the spurt of water. You can now buy a key with a small plastic reservoir to catch the spray, but that is for amateurs who know not what they do. Besides it is over twice the price, but the saving I made now pales to the slightest economic significance.

It was the in bathroom where it happened.

The bleed tap is easily reached and I turned it to open. Water gushed out but not from the bleed valve, but from the main fitting. My reaction was to tighten it quickly, but the washer which kept the thing water tight seemed to be now protruding from the where the fitting meets the radiator and water was still escaping. And escaping quickly. My mind did not fill with images of submariners fighting pressure leaks after being depth charged but of how to reduce the flow of money that was bound to be increasing. There was certainly some damage limitation being attempted. Like a paramedic on the scene of a dangerously haemorraging patient, I grabbed towels to apply pressure and soak up the flow.

Eventually, the spurt became a trickle, the trickle became a drip and then it stopped.

All I had to do now was isolate the flow to the radiator and I will be able to run the system until the heating engineer comes. I still had to call him, but not now from the position of competent householder but from that of meddling incompetent. I then discover that I am not able to isolate the radiator so we are without hot water for heating or washing. And, I remind you, it has snowed.

The man on the phone after some sympathetic words that ten years is pretty good service from a make he had never heard of. His boiler was 8 years old, of known manufacture and no doubt extremely well fitted by his own expert hands and he felt was becoming due for replacement. He was like a vet telling a loving pet owner that the best thing was to put poor Rover down. We laughed and blamed the builder of my house for cutting corners. We shared a moment of male bonding against modern builders. The bonding ended when I explained pathetically the damage to the offending radiator.

He added encouragingly that someone would be here “first thing” in the morning. I got up to a cold house at 7.45am. It is now 8.45am.

I admit to knowing very little about plumbing. There is a new addition to my plumbing glossary. I am also not sure what is meant by “first thing”. At least the snow is melting.