Shannon was off to playschool this morning, so Jade and I had a nice morning together. I almost went straight to Tesco's from playschool, nearly forgetting to come straight back home to meet a plumber, but thankfully at the last minute I remembered and got back to find him on the doorstep. Our boiler has been out of action for at least a month, and we've been making do with showering at friends' houses and once-a-week swimming to keep us clean. It's amazing how difficult it is to get a plumber to come and mend or even look at a boiler. Anyway one came a week or so ago but hasn't bothered to send a quote. This one today seemed to think (no surprise really) that an 11 year old boiler shouldn't be repaired but just replaced. And gave us a heart-stopping quote of £3900 plus VAT. We don't have that kind of money, and we don't have that kind of credit available either as we are desperately trying to pay down our existing loans. Hmmm.
After he'd gone Jade and I went straight off to Tesco's which was drastically easier with only one child instead of two. I have to laugh about that standard home educator's thing about a trip to the supermarket being educational though. I tried to point out to Jade the prices per 100g of things and how that helped you compare prices, and all she said was "I'm not interested in money". I told her she should be because the less she spent (in her adult future) on food the more she'd have available to spend on her horse, but she still wasn't bothered. It was definitely a 'maths avoidance' moment.
Got home around 11am and decided to make the most of the beautiful sunshine. We put rugs on the lawn and the big parasol up and lay on the grass reading our respective magazines (hers: Sparkle. Mine: Good Homes.) After a while we were getting hungry so got sandwiches and then I finished reading The Butterfly Lion to her while she ate and then spent a while pretending to be a horse. Then we had to rush and get Shannon.
The atmosphere was considerably different once there were two of them here again. I'm sure it would be lovely with either one of them at home on their own, but two of them together makes for three times the work and aggravations. I must learn to cope better with two requests being made of me at once, as that tends to make me very irritable. Anyway we had an hour or so at home of me reading some Dora books to Shannon and I did spend 10 minutes with them on the trampoline and then I got our swimming stuff together and we went off to the pool. Had a lovely swim in which Jade swam a whole width for the first time and was thrilled with herself :-) Then home for a healthy home-made dinner and a prolonged bedtime which is still ongoing as it's 10pm and Jade is still wide awake reading. I have been going up to her at 15 minute intervals to reassure her because she is constantly coming downstairs these days saying she is scared, whether it's of monsters or fire or anything else. I asked her tonight why she is more worried recently and she said it's because they watched Monsters Inc a few weeks ago! So I told her (again) how that was a made-up story that someone has just imagined and written, and suggested that she imagine herself to be WonderGirl with magical gifts and a quick brain and strong body with which she can beat the monsters, and imagine how she is going to win.
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4 comments:
Good strategy,hope it works for Jade. And well done on the width swimming :)
Ours was £3,250 inc VAT for taking out and disposing of old and replacing with new condensing boiler and 2 new radiators installed, 1 radiator removed, thermostatic valves put on all the radiators, system flush through and control system completely revamped and new pipework to turn into a fully pumped system (was a gravity system before, moved some pipes over by a foot). Quotes varied from £2,500 (hot water via Aga but we wanted to be able to have more hot water on demand should we need it) to £5,000 (to install in the loft). That was 2001.
Find out what companies do work under contract for British Gas and go to them directly.
We retained the hot water tank with immersion heater which we used when the mother board in the boiler broke after an electricity spike. (not that we remembered we had it for the first night when we showered at a friend's house).
Fab about the swimming :-)
fab news with the swimming!
Have you looked at any available grants for the boiler? Have a look here
http://www.warmfront.co.uk/do-i-qualify.htm
We got insulation done this way, there's no way would would ahve been able to afford to get it done otherwise. Also, it that doesn't work, have you asked your council if they are offering incentives on energy efficient boilers? Oh, and our boiler is twice that age and we have had it repaired!
I thought 11 years was young too but it's not clear what has gone wrong. My mum just replaced her 15 year old boiler and has spent a year spending money continually getting it repaired which proved to be a false economy. Sometimes when one part fails, the rest is about to follow . . .
Ours was about 30years, was a massive thing thant was half the height of the room and bigger than a normal oven size. It just collapsed when they started taking it apart. It was so inefficient that even installing the Aga which runs on gas 24hrs a day, our gas bills still went down. We should have changed it years before when we moved in. But it wasn't a very exciting way to spend money!
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