recent power outage in Medway

We also had a power cut last Friday here in the South-West, but only for about six and a half hours. We managed as we have a gas fire in the lounge and a single ring camping gas stove for heating food/water for tea, plus the electric Aga takes ages to cool down so we made use of the oven in that whilst it was still warm.

However, two doors up there was a young family (two young children) whose power cable had come down on the Friday. The cable was made safe on the day but wasn't renewed until the following Monday evening, after which one of the engineers called at our house to see if we were ok as he could see no lights in our house from the road. Interesting talking to him, they had already put over 580,000 properties back online with more to do, their repair team hadn't been home since Friday, they were just working all hours then sleeping in their vans, they had taken on over 1000 temporary staff to help cope - and, incredibly to my mind, had received no end of abuse. Why for goodness sake, they are trying to fix it, they didn't cause it. There are some mindless morons out there.

What we couldn't do with the power down was make a phone call - our landline phones are modern digital pick up and walk around the house jobs and the mobiles lost all signal. It was suggested we get an old analogue phone, which we now have, which will work in a power cut they tell me. Now I read BT in their infinite wisdom will make that useless in a couple of years by turning all landlines into digital; progress isn't always a good thing. That is really encouraging for the elderly vulnerable living in the sticks. Does nobody ever think these things all the way through?

One the subject of boiler heating hot water but not the heating circuit, we have twice in the past few months have our combi boiler lock out due to the overtemp cut-out within the boiler case actuating. It is situated right over the silly three port valve which had stuck in teh hot water position. I think what must have happened is that the heating system repeatedly called for heat, the boiler tried to respond but being stuck in HW mode just ended up overheating itself. Both times it cleared by me manually operating the valve as described above by Nigel B and away it went again, though I admit that the last time I did spray electrical contact cleaner around in a hope that if it was just a manual sticking of the vavle. Note to self, must get a replacement motor unit - only £15 in Toolstation it is claimed!!

Chris.

I have decide to have a standard gas fire re-fitted. Had to remove the old one as it was leaking.

Now to start looking for someone to do it to gas standards.

Well done. There comes a point when you have to start spending the money you saved up for a rainy day.

Keep cosy.

regards Martin

Edited By Martin Kyte on 23/02/2022 19:46:09

We own an analogue phone for the reasons Chris mentions but it'll only work plugged into the incoming 'master' socket which for reasons unknown is halfway up the stairs.
I’d guess the intention to go digital on the incoming phone lines is to avoid needing both fibre and copper? And the assumption that everyone has a mobile signal in their area - I wish.
Perhaps a small UPS to power up routers and digital phone systems for folk that don't.or can't run a generator?

pgk