Tuesday 17 October 2017

The real reason for the red sun


I was saved from the embarrassment of showing you the red sun yesterday that you all saw with your own eyes, because my iPhone isn't talking to my iMac. I did, however, send it to Green Eyes in London as a message, because I thought it was a local phenomena. I can just see her rolling her eyes whilst mumbling something about 'silly old man'.

I expect you are wondering what the situation is regarding my leaking water heater, aren't you? Well having spent days and weeks researching tankless ones because I have received no advice from any plumber or even plumber's merchant (they are scared of giving the wrong advice), I have bought the modern equivalent of what we already have. At least I know that it ought to work and if the worst comes to the worst, I can connect it myself. I am now waiting for a water heater to turn up as well as a hat.

After weeks of gleaning snippets of caveat-laden advice via the net and from people in the pub who gave the matter a full two seconds of unqualified thought, I was beginning to have my doubts about a tankless heater even working at all in our compact but adorable city apartment. One dealer (who insisted he was a real human being called 'Harry') considered my circumstances on a live chatline, and came to the conclusion that I needed two units, neither of which should be more than one metre away from the hot tap.

As I set out yesterday to go to a few plumber's merchants in the area (including Chippenham and the higher numbers of the Bath postcode) which I had not yet tried, the sky darkened, casting a ghoulish and unearthly pallor over the land, and a strong and unseasonably warm wind picked up. Something strange was happening.

When I got back to my workshop with the intention of making a few more calls to plumbers who I have never - and will never - met/meet, I looked up and was shocked to see a brilliant red moon glaring down on me through the fast-shifting, red clouds.

That was when I gave up on the idea of a tankless water heater for our house.

I am flattered to think that God put all those other people to trouble and needless worry, just so He could warn me that I was heading for domestic disaster.

I should have listened the first time weeks ago, when I was vainly waiting for the original plumber to come round one night and make the assessments. In the end, God had to shout.

22 comments:

  1. Header Tanks are unheard of here, we just have simple cylindrical water heaters.

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  2. God needs to shout at me. I know exactly what I want to hear.

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  3. I would have liked to see your red sun in Bath. I thought it was amazing.

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    1. Yeah, I was in the middle of cleaning a cupboard out, then I saw it out of the window. I grabbed my camera and went into the garden and took all the pictures out there

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  4. It wasn't so much red as a sulphur yellow here ..... perhaps we didn't need God as much as you did. XXXX

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    1. That will be your husband's personal attacks on the ozone layer.

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  5. Just put up a picture of the heater. Boring, isn't it?

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  6. As an aside, I have to tell someone - anyone - how delighted I am that the Tim Vine 'comedy' chat show has finally run it's last one for this year.

    I cannot legally tell you what I would like to do to Tim Vine, but let's just say it involves a Halloween broomstick and no axle-grease.

    Since I turned into a BBC Licence payer after about 45 years of getting it all for nothing (once dead), I find I am using my £175 a year to turn into Victor Meldrew, not that I watched any of that when it was fresh.

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  7. Yep, I hope David Davis and T. May heeded the warnings the weather was giving us yesterday.

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    1. Indeed. They need a new and sensible way to generate hot water without getting us into it - again.

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  8. We don't have hot water heaters in our bathrooms. I have no idea where the ones for this building even are. In the houses I've owned they were always in the basement.

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    1. Not knowing where your hot water comes from is what I consider posh.

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