Time to get serious about climate change. The local experts suggested that the first thing to do was to get rid of the electrical hot water system. Because our roof is not quite true north, I decided to go with a more expensive solar hot water system - evacuated tubes. All fully installed, they are not cheap.
I spent ages trying to understand how it worked. Every time we used hot water inside the house the gas booster would come on. Even when it had been a very hot day and no-one had been at home to use the hot water. I contacted the supplying company who told me that there couldn't be a problem - no-one else complained about this. The installing plumber told me that it was my fault that I didn't understand the system: everything was correctly installed, and I was a bit stupid. He arranged a time when my hubbie would be at home with me to come and explain how it all worked.
The day before the plumber was due to arrive hubbie and I both stood outside marvelling at this system that didn't make sense: the hot water tap was running, the gas booster was going full pelt, it was late on a very warm and sunny Sunday afternoon, no-one had been home all day, so the system should have been heating the water and there should be no gas boost. Then for some reason my hubbie decided to touch the electrical plug that the pump ran from. The pump sprang into motion instantly.
It turned out that the whole system had not been plugged in properly, so of course the pump wasn't working, and without that there could be NO hot water from the roof, and that was what I suspected was actually happening.
The plumber rang a short while later saying that he had checked the system, that it was working perfectly and that he would be there the following day to explain it to us. I told him not to bother, but to check that he had plugged the pump in fully before he left his next installations!
Sometimes it pays to be curious about how things work! It could have been years before we discovered that our solar hot water hadn't been plugged in.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment