You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

The boiler packs in. Not for the first time the boiler has gone kapput. The landlords site manager will probably give me a call back at about 4.30pm to say it's too late to get anyone out now so it will be Monday. Thats of course if he calls back at all, still waiting for a return call from 2 weeks ago. :mad:

No heating and hot water again all weekend and to cap it all I've just had to go and pick my daughter up from school because she is unwell.

How come these things never go wrong on Monday ?

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

...and, like us, you don't even a match to take your mind off it tomorrow!

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Commiserations lancsdave s**t always happens in that manner, threaten to report them to the Council as bad Landlords, they should have emergency cover under the new 'good landlord' agreement they will have had to sign with the council. If all else fails (if you can afford to pay to have it done yourself), do it and bill the Landlord.

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

I love your wit Wynonie, I read the one about Hollands pies tasting of (polish) it slayed me.:D. Apologies for the thread wander lancsdave.

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

I would ring them back and cause merry hell.

Child, Not well, Freezing temperatures, Not good.

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

go down to there office or there house and kick seven bells of sh!t outta them :D

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

OMG dave i know what its like ..ive just had no heating or water for three days and it was freezing........apparently it was the control panel on the boiler ...hope you get it done today ....good luck

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

Glad you like it, Ian. One of these days, I'll be round to "polish" off your Merlot! ;)

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

ring them back dave and tell them that if they dont get it sorted you eill get a plumber in an deduct it from the rent

thats what i would do especialy in weather like what we have at the moment

if they say you cant do that just say well watch me

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

Good thought, chav1! I would also consider a deduction from the rent for each day without heat - "Well, if you can't be bothered to supply heat until Monday, I won't be bothered to supply rent for that same period of time!" Don't know what the laws are over there, but over here there are some pretty stiff penalties for landlords who fail to supply heat.

The only silver lining is that, with no heat, one does not have nearly as much need for a shower to smell pleasant!:p

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It’s all very well paying for the repair yourself and then billing the landlord Ianto.W. but if he won’t mend the boiler he is unlikely to pay the bill. The thing is he will claim that what you paid is far above what he would have paid and thus starts another argument. So what are you going to do then? Small claims court I guess. Even if you win you still haven’t got your money if he still won’t pay up and it will cost you even more money to go back to court and eventually get the Bailiffs in.

If you do go to such lengths and get full satisfaction you have made an enemy of your landlord and he WILL find ways of making your life miserable and eventually kicking you out into the street.

If you try withholding your rent that could get you kicked out. But that would depend on the terms of the rent agreement.

With a child in the house I would contact Social Services or Health and Safety.

If you don’t fancy doing that because once again you are making an enemy of your landlord you are left with one option. Stick it out. But in the meantime try and borrow a Calor gas heater or an electric fire and just heat one room, where the telly is. Even if you have double-glazing keep your curtains drawn. The oven on the cooker is a good source of heat with the door open and if your kitchen is adjacent to your living room it could supply some warmth.

Don’t forget that those of us who lived through the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and even 60’s only had one fire for the whole house and we survived.

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

I'm not sure that I would want to use the oven on the cooker unless I had a carbon monoxide detector working. That CO can kill!

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

And to sum it up 'over a barrel'.

Outcome of todays phone calls is that they will TRY and fix it sometime next week. The threat to withhold rent also resulted in the counter threat of 'you can't do that or we can evict you'. The threat of phoning the HSE on Monday morning to inform them that I still have no gas safety certificate 3 months from moving in was met with the response 'Thank you' and the phone being put down.

The problem is if I move out now then I will probably have to move out of the catchment area of the school that my daughter wants to go to and defeats the object of moving here in the first place, something I now regret but of course hindsight is a wonderful thing, and above anything else my daughters future comes first even if we have to put up with greedy bastard millionaire landlords who don't give a toss.

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

I assume that you use your oven for baking cakes, roasting roasts etc. so how come you haven’t succumbed to C2O poisoning so far?

As you say lancsdave the landlord will always have you over a barrel especially if he is a private landlord. Housing Associations and the Council have got emergency engineers on standby for such occasions.

I found that when sat down watching TV, raising the legs off the floor and wrapping a blanket around them helped a lot. Of course you would have to wear an extra jersey.

There is a plus though. A cold bedroom doesn’t half encourage you to get undressed and into bed sharpish instead of loitering around. The same goes for getting up.

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

Don't know if this is any help Dave but Wilkinsons have halogen heaters in at a tenner a piece;they work a treat,take it from someone with the worst circulation in the world!

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

Sorry lancsdave,but you can tell it's friday when i'm on here with a skinful inside me:D Hope you get your heating problem sorted soon.BOL Max

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

do you have any other form of heating? like a gas fire?
my boiler packed up on a weekend once, but because I had a fire it was not classed as a emergency!:eek:

but your landlord should do it within 1 working day if you havent! if....the heating or hot water are not working between 31 October and 1 May;)

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

Most private landlords don't put a fire in now, it saves costs on safety checks. We have an halogen heater in the living room. Biggest problem is filling the bath with a kettle. :(

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

Had you had experience of service life you would know that you can have a perfectly good wash all over with about a gallon of hot water and a further gallon of cooler water to rinse off the soap.

I don’t suppose that you have an electric shower?

Surely some kind neighbour would let your family use their bathroom over the weekend. If not you are welcome to come over to my place and use my shower. If you haven’t got your own transport I’ll come and fetch you and take you back. And you’ll get tea/coffee and biscuits as well.

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

I did say "if you could afford it" as I wrote that reply a plumber was repairing my boiler, the igniter to the back boiler wire went and I had the same problem lancsdave has, I'm not griping I had to pay the plumber out of my own pocket as the house is mine, I was lucky he is a mate of mine and did not charge much, if lancs dave needs any help I will do my best to help him . But as you rightly stated the boiler belongs to the landlord and his hands are tied. Lancsdave if I can be of any help to you PM me, you will find I can be quite resourcefull.

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

What a rotten thing to happen LancsDave, just come on here to sympathise .. hope you get it fixed soon.

Have no experience of Landlords, etc., but know British Gas always treat loss of heating as an emergency as in a gas leak (wonder what would happen if you had one of these) and come around almost immediately. I do have a contract with them, but got the impression nothing to do with this. As far as I am concerned this is an 'Emergency' .. :mad:

Back to the Friday thing, have you also noticed that Solicitors send their letters out on a Friday to arrive Saturday? Became aware of this when I was going through a divorce, probably to give you time to calm down. :rolleyes:

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The gas is the responsability of transco I think. so it woud be upto them to come and sort a gas leak.

However a boiler is the owners responsability, British Gas will charge you a 'one off fee' or you can take out seperate cover with them to help when this happens.

Just as a though, My boiler once wouldnt work, all it needed was turning completely off (no power to it at all) and back on. Worth a try.

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

If it's still not resolved tomorrow Dave you are more than welcome to use the facilities here at Ormerod Towers,-well you can get a hot shower at least ! Pm me if you need it.

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Thanks for the offer Lindsay, and also the earlier offers of jambutty and Ianto. We are fixed up now for bathing location and we have a couple of heaters around the house for warmth.

Calmed down a bit now, at least until Monday when I speak to the landlords again. Definatley need to find somewhere better than this but it will have to wait until March when we find out about the school situation.

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And the saga goes on. Had a plumber arrive at 10.50 this morning. Looks at the boiler and says is it just the heating or the hot water thats not working. I politely pointed out to him that there was no electric feeding the boiler. "Ah right you need an electrician then it might be the circuit board." I also politely mentioned that I actually told them on the phone what the fault was.

Now correct me if I'm wrong but if somebody comes to fix/maintain a boiler do they normally send a plumber and an electrician or am I wrong to think that the one person should be able to identify and then fix the problem. When people get trained on installing/maintaining boilers do they actually train plumbers up on one part of it and electricians on the wired parts ?

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

Typical.

You would thing they would send a 'Boiler Technician' to fix a boiler.

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

most corgi reg gas fitters nowadays are trained in the elecs of a boiler as so many modern boilers have pcb's fitted but yet an electrician can't be messing with boilers with not being corgi reg. So was astounded that the fella they sent you wasn't up on his boiler elecs!!!

Re: You Can Tell It's Friday When
 

its sounds to me dave like the landlords taking you on a tata,the plumber if thats what he really is, probably his mate.or some cowboy who works on the cheap.only advice i can offer is keep stum - look around quitely for another drum, then move.

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Daily update, I feel like I've got my own blog here :)

Another bloke who isn't a boiler engineer came to fix the boiler today !!. He has figured out it's the circuit board and said that the plumber who came yesterday should have recognised that.

The fix now depends on how quick or even if the Natural History Museum have a replacement. If they find one I will be amazed.

A small snippet of information came out while talking to him about Gas Safety Certificates, I thought I was special in not getting one but it appears that this company have about 30 houses still waiting to be certified :eek: I now have the number of the HSE for the area this company operate from but ran out of time to ring them. Tomorrows first job on my list.