November 19, 2007

It's Monday here in the UK- depending on where you are it might be Monday too, or it could be Tuesday. :)

Yesterday we had some excitement with the pump that runs our house heat. We have radiators all over the house, and the heating fluid is heated upstairs and pumped through the radiators. I'm not sure if it is water that is just cycled through, or if they use a type of light oil that is run past a heat exchanger and then out again. I didn't see a heat exchanger but our water heater has a million pipes coming in and out of it's little closet, many of which are covered with grey insulation thingies.

Here it is- the water heater tank and the red thing is the pump.

Anyway the pump was cavitating (making churning grinding noises because there was air in the pump) so we turned the system off and then on again to allow the pump to refill. That worked for awhile, then it started again. And then while we were gone at the chch last night the heat kicked on and the pump finally gave up. Now it makes a kind of quiet buzzing sound. So we turned it off and went without heat last night. And today.

Yes the pump is actually upside down. :)

Fortunately it is not so cold here that people couldn't do without house heat. Yes you'd feel a little cold, but you wouldn't die from exposure like in Michigan. It's actually in the 50s today, which isn't too bad, and if we sit next to each other and put a down blanket on our laps, and put hot water into our water bottles to keep under the blanket then we stay pretty toasty. We have Nelly too who is happy to sit on your lap and keep you warm, or snuggle under the blanket. Also we do still have hot water from the tap, and our bathroom shower water works on an on-demand system so we could still have warm showers.



Our landlady has a heater repair person that she uses, a local guy, who just came by, said the bearings were bad, but got it to start running and suggested we not turn it off until tomorrow morning when he can replace it. All this pipe stuff brought back fond memories of my fluids unit experiments during my last year of Chem E....ah the good old days. ;)

I'm finally feeling back to my normal self, after staying at home for most of the weekend except to venture out for an hour or 2 Sunday. Which is good, since we don't have any heat- that would definitely have made my flu harder to get rid of. :)