Central Heating Repair Day

Last night, just as we sat down to eat our dinner, mother in law rang to say her heating wasn't working and she was cold…. “Here we go again” we thought. We tried to talk her through checking the thermostat, but without success, so we managed to call her neighbour who popped round to have a look. Sadly he couldn't get it going, but did put her gas fire on - and then popped back later to turn it off when she went to bed.

So this morning we left home at 7:30 (I had taken the dogs at at 6:00 for their walk) and collected some heaters from Mrs madwill's studio. Arrived in Darlington at 9:00 and set the heaters going.

I checked out the heating system and found the boiler was working, but no radiators were on. Eventually traced the fault to a solenoid actuator on the pump, which wasn't switching the heated water to the radiators. It had a manual override which enabled the heating to work but didn't heat the water tank. Fortunately, the shower is electric and the appliances run off cold water so she will be able to manage - she is having a new system installed in three weeks, so not worth repairing the old system.

Then it was shopping and lunch and then we came home. On the way back there was a serious accident on the opposite carriageway of the A1 - see extras, screen grabs from my dashcam

I then took Milo back home - but horrendous traffic around south Leeds meant a normal one hour round trip took two and a half hours….

Stopped to photograph this field of rape, which I blipped the other day  but what a difference a bit of sun and blue sky makes