House Woes III

Internet connection on PC died a slow sad lingering death.

So had to go contact internet site we purchased it from, to be told that warranty had run out. DH furious that they sell such inferior products with known defects (known as in forums are full of pple whinging about the lousy product from a fairly reputable brand).

We then had to pursue the manufacturers themselves. Luckily it was under warranty but we were put through quite a few hoops first (run a series of tests to see if it works on another PC or laptop, which anyone with common sense would have done prior to calling them) mostly to expensive telephone numbers.

Anyhow, we finally convinced them that it was indeed faulty (the wireless card) simply stopped one day after cutting out with increasing frequency. We were given a code/reference number that enabled us to return the product. Yay!

Sent out the entire boxed product only to receive a padded envelop with only the wireless card
and CD back. What happened to my nice box??

House Woes II

Our boiler started making rather stuttering metallic noises. We panic, turn it off, freeze and turn it back on about 12 hours later. Peace and quiet. Warmth begins to permeate the house again and we begin to shed our layers of clothing. Of course, this lasts only 8 hours before the racket begins again. We begin to sleep in shifts so that we don't miss the rattling and risk damaging our boiler further.

Calls to British Homecare follow - they are responsive and the first engineer is at our place within 48 hours. Needless to say, Sods Law was at work and it was working perfectly when he turned up. He was kind enough to give us his mobile number in the event it acted up again and he was in the area he would pop round again. Now that is service.

A few hours later, we rung but he was out of our area. So we made an appointment for another engineer to visit.

To cut a long story short, it finally took 6 visits (and 4 weeks later) by 3 different engineers before the faulty circuit board was diagnosed, part ordered and replaced.

Oh, it wasn't just the heating but affected the hot water as well. Cold showers in Winter - not recommended.

House woes I

You may have noticed a marked lack of activity on this blog for the past few months....let me tell you the tale of my household woes.

First our flat top 3*3 m roof in the extension started leaking water, then major chunks of the plasterboard fell away and DH started moaning about how much work it would take to replace/repair it. However, he did take the project of finding reputable builders/roofers onboard. Note, the project involved calling around, getting them in to give a quote and get a shortlist done, references, etc.

Did not require DH to physically replace said rood himself ;-)

Basically I would have to eat all the food I had stockpiled (noodles, rice, etc.) there as well as empty the freezer of similarly stockpiled meat.

Now if you know me even in the slightest, you will know that I like having a surplus of foodstuff in my (non-existent) larder. Will post next about my thoughts post-Katrina.

Anyway, back to the leaking roof. 6 weeks later.....no action had been taken other than a big bucket placed under the offending leak.

Granted we had a whole heap of other problems occuring around the same time, but 6 weeks is a long time to have to empty the bucket of water each time it rained heavily (whilst sloshing through the overflow to do so).

Took action into one's own hands. Who would have known the number of different types of roofs there are and the no. of charlatans out there! Even those listed on a trade association website... I think that I must have called/emailed 20 roofers. We have about 8 different quotes. Well, the husband insisted on 3 quotes and since 2 of those were for some fibre-glass material (£1300 + VAT) which were summarily dismissed due to the disparity in price.

Of course at the time that it was a rather ludicrous price to pay for replacing a felt-top roof. I mean what in the world is a felt-top anyway??!!!

Knowing next to nothing about DIY (hey, I've always been a city gal) or roof replacements, I sought out online forums to ask if £1300 was a reasonable amount to pay for a roof replacement. Some of the comments/feedback were less than complimentary about my lack of commonsense....

Well, you will be glad to know that the roof is no longer leaking but has not been repaired or replaced. So how did I do it? Read on.....