Warmth

Our house was built around 1930, at a time when investing in cavity walls sounded like crazy talk. With some foresight the builders might have realised that the real madness heading our way could take the form of fuel bills for heating said house. But no, this was a problem left to later owners, such as us. So when we saw an offer for a new boiler that we would be crazy to turn down, we placed an order with British Gas to sort our heating.

Our old boiler dated back to the 80s, and was never serviced and never broke down for as long as we have lived in this house - around 20 years. Seeing it after it was removed, I can see why - basically it was a large cast iron radiator, with a space to burn stuff in the middle. Short of rusting away or getting blocked, there was pretty well nothing that could go wrong with it.

We spent much of today freezing in the house while fielding questions about various aspects of the installation. Eventually the basic work was done, leaving us with a new and rather small condensing boiler that we hope will be very much cheaper to run; we think our old one probably used something like 40% more gas than necessary.

We also now have a Hive controller with thermostatic valves on all the radiators. A short-term benefit has been that this evening has been lovely and warm - the radiator valves haven’t yet been incorporated into the system, meaning we haven’t been able to turn radiators down! I do hope the kids don’t get too used to living like this.

I need to remind them that there are two main options for where to go from here: run the house as we had previously been (ie cold) and pay less for gas; or use the same amount of gas we were, and be much warmer. There’s also the “somewhere between the two extremes” option, which I’m currently favouring.

I suspect that there may be quite a battle over the coming days as we navigate this new route, especially as the choice dictates how much hot water is available for baths and showers…

Photo by Ben McLeod on Unsplash