Feb
08

Hot And Cold Running Water…. Not!

Woke up this morning, ready for the usual work morning routine only to find that fate had other ideas. There was I poised to brush my teeth, and as I turned the cold tap on… no running water. So then I tried the hot tap… nothing either, no free flowing water at all. It took a second or two to realise that we wouldn’t have hot water since we no longer have any tanks because of the combi boiler installation. That’s when I realised there was only one possible explanation.

Exposed pipe

It had been a few days since the builder was here last, as they had poured the concrete for the foundation and were leaving it to set properly. This was taking quite a few days since after pouring the concrete, there had been much rain followed by snow and days and nights still around freezing. Obviously, our main water pipe was still exposed as a result, and even though it had some lagging applied, the temperature last night was so low that the pipe had obviously frozen solid. Not to worry I thought, I would just get my blowlamp from the garage and gently warm the pipes to get the water flowing again, since there’s not much else you can do at that time in the morning. Read the rest of this entry »

Feb
02

7 Days Of Extension Tension

Perfect planning as they say prevents poor performance, so after a degree of to and fro with the local planning office, we now had a set of working drawings, a builder and an electrician arranged to do all the work. Just need to get cracking now…. but some things are easier said than done :)

It’s all in the preparation

A skip was to be needed for handling all the debris created during the course of the build, and was duly delivered, a day later than planned, and naturally, after asking for it to be placed as close to the garage as possible to enable continued use of the driveway, it was dropped in the middle of the drive. No worries, I would just bar it into position after getting home from work, I thought. This seemed like a good idea at the time, inching it into position using a thick plank, and it wasn’t until later that I realised I had used muscles that have lain dormant for a bit longer than I care to remember. Read the rest of this entry »

Jan
26

Blog Feed Faux Pas

For a number of months our Google Analytics report has been showing a distinctly different set of results to my hosting web statistics. We know for certain there is a mismatch between the two since Google Analytics doesn’t even show page views on occasions where there has definitely been interaction between readers of my blog and the comments forms for instance. What could be cause this disparity ?

Feed me now

Google Analytics is a great tool, but only tracks page views for pages where the tracking code is included, for example, any of the pages or posts using the WordPress main header.php file, where the script is included just before the closing </head> tag. WordPress is great in that it also provides a feed to a multitude of websites running feed readers, and this bypasses the need for people to actually visit our blog. Trouble is, the comments feed provided by WordPress also removes the necessity for comment spammers to even visit a blog, since they do so at a safe distance. And you don’t even get so much as a page hit from it. Read the rest of this entry »

Jan
21

Dirty Dishes… Done Dirt Cheap

The last couple of times of using the dishwasher, we have noticed that the plates, glasses and cutlery are not coming as clean as they should, and that’s despite Lin having cleaned the thing a couple of times already. The machine just wasn’t performing at it’s peak, leading to Lin complaining about the thing and suggesting that perhaps it was time for a new one. I thought we better take a look before we go buying anew.

All washed up

Running a dishwasher doesn’t sound very thrifty does it, but one of our aims is to continue living at or better than our current standard of living whilst costing less money in the process. This means that although we do run the dishwasher, it only gets turned on a couple of times per week, when the dishwasher is literally full. We already have plenty of crockery and cutlery, so allowing the dishwasher to fill up over two or three days rather than running it daily means lower electricity bills and lower detergent costs. Those little dishwasher tablets can cost 15 pence each, so reducing the number of tablets used coupled with doubling up on those special offers the supermarkets run means we’ve more than halved the cost of clean plates in our house. That’s when it cleans properly that is. Read the rest of this entry »

Jan
12

Dewsbury Dash

For what only seems like a few weeks, things had been quiet on the family health front. We’d had a good Christmas, having both my father and our lad home to stay with us, along with the pleasure of Lin’s parents on Christmas Day, things were really looking good for a while. During the course of their stay though, both our son and my Dad had brought their germs home with them, which they were not shy at sharing with us. Even for the sharing though, my father still managed to hold onto his malady, as did our lad. He had to get some antibiotics on his return down south.

Here we go again

Yesterday, Lin got a phone call from father’s lady friend, telling us he was in Dewsbury District Hospital. The two of them had been at a funeral yesterday morning, and were outside the crematorium having just arrived when Dad began to feel dizzy. He realised what was happening and with the assistance of a couple of gentlemen nearby managed to get sat down before he passed out. Naturally worried, his lady had phoned for an ambulance and got him taken into hospital, where he was being kept for assessment. Read the rest of this entry »

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