electrician

Bl**dy postal system …

/ Tony / 1 Comment

I fully believe that the British postal system (as run by The Post Office) has hit rock bottom. It’s been getting worse over the past twenty or twenty-five years. How many can remember the days when we received two postal deliveries? There was one early morning, and another around lunchtime. At Christmas time, there was even a delivery on the Sunday before Christmas Day. The delivery was always around the same time. You could almost set your clock by them. Collections from pillar-boxes happened at least twice a day, with an extra collection from your local post office.

It’s all gone now though. We are lucky if we see the postman/woman. It is no wonder that more and more people and organisations are using one of the big courier services when it can be a lot cheaper, and safer. Which brings me to the point of this post.

I ordered some light bulbs from eBay. I didn’t go for the cheapest or the most expensive but settled on one that appeared to have a least a few good reviews. I duly paid and the expected delivery date was the 2nd of November. I got home on the 29th of October and found a parcel on the doorstep. The label told me who it was from and so I knew it was my lightbulbs. However, I could immediately tell that something was wrong. The parcel was squashed at one corner which led me to believe that the ‘post person’ had attempted to post the item through the letterbox. In marked contrast, the delivery by a local courier was hidden behind a planter, with an email showing a photo of the exact spot.

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As I expected, we go into an almost full lock-down on Thursday. I think it was inevitable given what the experts were saying, and have been saying for the past month. Hopefully, this will bring the dreaded “R” rating down, which may mean that the youngest could be home for Christmas. However, I’m not holding my breath. When you listen to Ministers like Micheal Gove, who last week was saying that there was no chance of a ‘lock-down’ and is now saying that may go on beyond the 2nd of December, you have to wonder whose strings are being pulled by whom!

I have already decided that my hair is not going to be a priority over the next few weeks. I did have it cut back in July and have been meaning to go again, but the last time I tried, the barbers were busy (1 customer and 2 waiting) and the time before, it was shut. So I’m not going to bother.

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I purchased one of these yesterday. In fact, I got two for £15.00 which was a saving of over £8.00. Always up for a bargain! I have been meaning to change two of the sockets in the conservatory since we had the new roof and windows. I should have got the electrician to do it then, but never got around to asking. Now I have no excuse. I just have to get into the mood sometime this week.

Maybe a long day …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I have the electrician with me today. You may remember we had an issue with some of the wiring when the new conservatory roof was put on. The electrician fixed that, but when he came to wire up the lighting, he found another problem. It appears that there is an issue with what he called ‘the zoning’ on the consummer panel. Back in the day, it was called a ‘Fuse Box’, but things have got a little more complicated since then.

The one we have currently has only 5 circuit breakers, a cooker circuit breaker and a main switch. It seems that this is not enough and so we are having to have a bigger (and better) one installed. Unfortunately, the one he brought had a part missing, so he had to go off to the wholesaler to get that replaced.

Looks like they could be here a while.

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All finished with only one small problem which was easily fixed. It seems that one of the sockets did not have the earth wire connected correctly. It must have been like that since the conservatory was built. It wasn’t particularly dangerous, it just wasn’t very good.

All in all it took just over three and a half hours and a good one and a half was testing each socket.

Nearly there and other things …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

It’s painting time. Eldest son came around to do the ceiling as Mrs H thought I would struggle. I’m not sure if she thought I was too short or too old. He is about 5′ 7″ and I’m 5′ 4″. I don’t think it was a height issue. There was huge amount to cover, but we got the undercoat done in one day.

The following day, I cracked on with the top coat on the walls. We are using the same neutral colour that we have throughout the house. It’s a colour called “Natural Hessian” and it’s a bit like a marriage between magnolia and beige. It looks awful when being applied, but it improves vastly as it dries. The picture doesn’t really do it justice. I just need to give the main wall another coat, as it has dried a little patchy where I have done the cutting in.

Now all that is needed, is the new flooring and the electrics to be sorted. When the electrician came to connect the new roof lights, he did some testing so he could sign off the work. He then found some issue with the house electrics. He thinks it is something to do with the ‘zoning’ in the fuse box. So he is coming back in the middle of March to sort that out. Meanwhile, we had booked the flooring guy to come next week to fit the new floor and as the electrician may have to lift some floorboards, having a new floor would be another issue. And so the saga continues.

Recently, I have revisited the online chat rooms that I used to use a few years ago. The site is supposed to be a ship, with lots of decks and rooms. There are people who monitor what is going on, so in theory, it is pretty much safe. I stopped about three five years ago as I was getting bored with it. Then there were issues with some of the chatters who were not as pleasant as they should be. However, about a month ago I signed up again, with a different profile and username just to see if anything had changed. Guess what? I found myself getting back into the swing of it. Only problem was that I was now a very basic user with limited access to the main site. You have to progress through the levels by chatting more. Last, when I changed my browser and tried to login to the chat room, the browser had remembered my old login and I was now using my old profile, that had 11 years experience. I was back at a quite high level.

I’m not sure how long it will last, but for the time being it’s all well.

… end of Day 2

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They didn’t quite finish today. One of the window boards had been damaged and was too short. So the two lads are coming back in the morning to fit a new piece. The plasterer is also coming tomorrow to do the final insulated plasterboards in the roof. There seems to be quite a bit of plastering to do, but hopefully they should be all done early afternoon.

The issue with the three red wires that had been cut was sorted by the electrician. We have no real idea what happened but it is thought that the initial wiring problem was from when the conservatory was first built. Then when we had new outside lights installed, that particular electrician had not installed the lights properly. He also fixed our problem with the alarm system. We have got his details, as a good electrician that can be trusted, can be hard to find.

Day two …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

They are back again and right on time at 08:30. It’s very wet, so they opted to take the old patio door out. Problem: while cutting the frame, one of them cut through three wires. What is a strange thing is that all three wires are red! The electrician is coming to sort it out.

Tried contacting the alarm company, as we have/had a ‘tremble’ sensor on the door. The alarm company not interested as they did not install the original system. They wanted to charge a huge amount just to come out and look. It was going to be around £200.00 before they did anything so we are thinking just hide the sensor under the plasterwork. The main room sensor picks up movement where the old door was I don’t think we need it.

Mrs H has gone off to get her nails fixed and to get a few things done in Wetherby. That’s going to take a couple of hours at least. I overheard the fitters talking and they seem to think that they will have done all their work by around 15:30. Given how much work they have done this morning, I think that could be right.

Tomorrow, the plasterer is due. I’ll be glad when he’s done his work, as it means we will be able to get into the garage again. It’s always been a bit of a tight squeeze in there anyway, what with all the ‘stuff’ we already have, but now we have all the plaster-board in there ready to be used tomorrow. There is so little space, that I cannot even get to the cup-board where my beer is kept !!!

Tune in again for the next (yawn) instalment …

… not finished

/ Tony / Leave a comment

As I expected, there is still looks to be a bit to do. It’s supposed to be watertight and should be okay for light showers, so fingers crossed. They are back tomorrow morning, and we’re hoping that they get it finished in the morning. I’m not so sure. The roof tiling plates are still in their plastic wrapping and the old patio door is still in place. There’s also the beading that hasn’t even been started yet. Mrs H is having her nails doing tomorrow and we were supposed to be out for lunch. Not holding my breath.

We are expecting the plasterer on Friday and the electrician is due on Monday. Tuesday is the day it all gets signed off, hopefully and then there is just finance agreement to sign. We are paying over three years, which is supposed to be interest free, but as the sales rep said, “nothing is really free” so the interest is probably built into the final cost.

Watch this space …

Finally over …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

This, of course, refers to our new bathroom. The fitters finished at around 1pm on Friday, but there was an issue with the lighting. They just couldn’t get it to work. The issue started on Thursday morning when they had fitted the ‘over the sink’ cupboard clip_image001which has two LED strip lights to light it up. No matter what the guys clip_image002did, there was no lighting. One of them called the electrician that they use, who couldn’t come straight away, but promised to come early that afternoon. He didn’t turn up. Next time we had was Friday morning which quickly changed to Friday afternoon. We needed him to be away before R*** came home at 5pm. The guy turned up at around 5:30, which was too late if he needed to turn off the main power supply. So it was arranged for him to come on the following Monday, just after 9am, which he did. Took about an hour, and when he finished he explained that one of the cupboard lights was not working. He had informed the company we were buying the bathroom off and they advised that they would be ordering a new one. That was fitted yesterday. K*** is very pleased with the outcome and we both think they have done a good job. It was not cheap by any means, but it is 1000 times better than it was before.

I do think the company is missing a trick though. I would have taken some photos before the job was started and more when it was finished. I would have then asked for permission to upload them to the company website, as a ‘Before & After’ type of self-advertisement. Could even have a few shots (not many though) of the fitters doing the job.

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I thought I had found the perfect part-time job for myself yesterday. I don’t want (or need at the moment) a job with many hours. This one would have only been 7 hours, on a Friday doing mainly admin work on the reception desk at a local school. Slightly fewer hours than I was looking for, but it would have been something.

Now, the issue here was that when I took early retirement, there were some conditions laid down. The main one was that I could not work for the Council, either paid or voluntary for 12 months from my final working date. This was because it wasn’t actually retirement in its usual capacity. How it worked was that I was taking voluntary redundancy (VR) and that the Council had arranged with the Local Government Pension scheme, that I could take my pension and lump sum early. As the closing date for this job is the 9th October, I would be in breach of the VR terms by applying before the 1st November.

A little disappointing, but it’s been the first time I have seen anything, that I know I could do with the hours that would suit. I just have to hope that they re-advertise the job again. It sometimes happens.

Almost a major disaster …..

/ Tony / Leave a comment

You may be forgiven for thinking that some terrible had almost happened. Well for us, it probably was something terrible. For other, not so terrible. It all started at around in the very early hours of this morning. For some bizarre reason, and I’ll come to the bizarre bit later, I awoke and realised that electric radio/alarm was not working. The usual reason for this a regional power cut. Mrs H said I should set the alarm on my phone, so off I trotted downstairs to set it. It was only when I got to the bottom of the stairs that I realised that I had switched the stair light on and it worked. After a few moments of intense head scratching, it dawned on me that something (probably the alarm/radio) had blown a fuse and the circuit breaker had tripped. This was just about 4:35am.

I went to the garage, and had a look at the ‘fuse’ box, saw which one had tripped and tried to reset it. Nightmare !!!! It would not reset. Time after time I tried, but nothing. In the end I gave up and went back to bed, told Mrs H we would have to get an electrician to have a look, as I did not have a clue. We got up around 8:30 and I tried again. Still no success. Googled the problem and most of the responses came back as ‘call an electrician’ or find out which is the problem appliance. However, the disaster was approaching ….. R*** was starting to stir. His computer had shut down when the battery got to 5% and his TV and video was not working. For any other 21 year old, this would not be a problem and they would understand. But for a 21 year old Autistic lad, whose life revolves around his computer and video, it is a huge and potentially violent issue.

Mrs H quickly scanned the parish magazine and found the number of the electrician that literally lives around the corner. I explained the problem and cleverly, he asked me to send him a photo of the fuse box so he could see for himself what our set up was. He very quickly came back with the instructions of what I was to do. This involved unplugging everything on the circuit and trying the reset again. I did this and the problem still existed. He told me that if it did not work, he would come round, but it would be late afternoon

By this time R*** had awoke and was asking for his computer …. things were starting to get a little tense. It was then I realised, that the small fridge freezer appeared to be off. So I unplugged this and tried the reset …… hurrah it worked. However, as soon as I plugged the fridge freezer in it tripped again. We have it plugged into a 4 way trailing socket, I do not know what made me think of it, but I removed the 4 way and tried again. This time there was no reset. I went back into the house and began gingerly plugging everything back in. We were now up and running, the disaster had been averted and the 4 way trailing socket was safely in the bin. I rang the electrician back and told the outcome. Thanked him profusely and asked how much I owed. He told me I owed him nothing, and added, that if we ever needed any electrical jobs doing, just to give a call.

When you look at it, something really positive came out of all this. We now know an electrician that we feel we can use, confident that he is not going to rip us off. That is worth a lot and I think this guy knows that. For the price of a ten minute phone call, he has gained a prospective customer and to me that is very good business sense.

Now to come to the bizarre bit that I mentioned earlier. We discovered that the heating and hot water system utilises the same circuit, as that had stopped also. As I busy switching things off I noticed that the times clock had stopped at about 04:30. This was around the same time that I had originally woken up. It was almost as if, the power tripping had disturbed my sleep. Most unusual ….. bizarre in fact. Anyone care to explain?