Busy day today so started fairly early for a Saturday. Took the dog out for a walk. Then I called in to do a home check that I didn’t have a phone number for, thankfully they were in. Then I had another home check right near home. After that it was off to Tesco’s to do the shopping.

Came back, had a light lunch, then off to Screwfix in Yate to pick up a load of heating chemicals. Then from there it was off to another home check the other side of the city. Annoyingly passing another Screwfix on the way. It was all cats today.

So came back and started to clean out the feed and expansion tank. In the end I bailed it out using a cup. Got rid of all the water then gave it a good scrub and disinfect. Then I attached a hose to the drain valve, shoved the dog in the garden and put the hose out the front door. Opened the cock and just let water flow through the system for a bit. After that I tied up the ballcock in the tank and drained down the system. I then refilled it with Sentinel X800, which is a sludge clearer. I turned the pump on high and fired up the system. I left it for about ten minutes with all the radiator valves open. Then in turn I opened one radiator at a time and beat the crap out of it with a rubber mallet wrapped in a towel. After I finished the upstairs I shut the system down and opened up the Magnaclean. That was absolutely full. So cleaned the filter out and did all the downstairs radiators the same way. Drained the system down again and then cleaned the filter once again, which was full. Finally then refilled the system with Sentinel X400 which is another sludge cleaner but this one you leave in the system for four weeks. So I’m leaving this one with all the valves open and the pump on full for the next month, hopefully that will get shot of the rest of the sludge and it will behave itself without gurgling at me.

Oh, just in time for a bath. May be some wine. People moan that draining down and refilling a central heating system takes ages…I’ve done it twice in an evening.

So started the day off with not really wanting to start the day. So watched one of the ‘Royal Institution Christmas Lectures’ instead. It had lots of explosions, can’t beat a good bang. So that gave me a fairly fruitless idea, I was going to get Jamie aroused. I tried all the usual stuff, talking about whales, pointing out his wobbly bits and getting his nipple up like the end of a Biro, all without too much success. I then found out that the bit between the balls and the ass hole is called the ‘taint’, as in ‘ain’t the ass, ain’t the cock’. There is some confusion over this that some people think it should be called the ‘Gooch’ over some guy who apparently they couldn’t decide if he was a cock or an arsehole. Anyway I found that slapping him on the ‘taint’ and ‘mooing’ also wasn’t bringing about any kind of eroticism so I got up and picked up all the dog shit from the garden.

We then went to Cribbs, where he went into Game and bought something confusing and I went into John Lewis and bought a selection of cheese knives. Then came back and put said knifes on wall. Didn’t like the position so re drilled it and moved it again. I then spent the rest of the remainder of the afternoon balancing radiators and updating my movie blog. “Untraceable (2008)” “A perfect getaway (2009)” “Case 39 (2009)”

I think the radiators are almost finally there, need to go around and do one last check, but all seem to be heating up nicely now and I’m getting my 12 degrees between flow and return. I must turn the water heating back on soon as yes, it’s almost time for a bath.

Quite a few things to get on with tomorrow, still not overly happy with my cheese selection.

Started the day off reading Kindle books on wine making. Doesn’t seem so much as a dark art, more of a severe chemical reaction. Ordered a couple of books as it’s something I’d like to thumb through, also ordered bigger barrels to do the 30 bottle kit.

Walked the dog. She has been farting like a trooper after last nights curry. So thought she needed to run around and degas for a bit so we played with a ball in the garden for half hour. She was suitably tired and took about four shits, all of them had a certain aroma of Chicken Tikka.

I then drove to Cribbs, went in Halfords and bought a funnel then went into Maplin and got served by a real miserable shite. I then walked around the Mall thing, admired cheese boards in the John Lewis sale. Didn’t buy anything.

Came back and de-scaled the coffee machine. I then decided that now that everything has been tested and working on the heating it was indeed time to re-balance the whole lot again. I have my new gadget now so it’s just a matter of adjusting the lockshields and waiting for the temperature differential to reach 12 degrees. Which is why I’m now typing this sat on the floor in the guest bathroom. This valve is a tricky one as it’s the first one in the run, it’s currently on 9.5 degrees, I think that’s about as close as I’m going to get it.

Ended up slowing the pump down again as I still seem to be getting air into the system. So I’ve now got the radiators upstairs fairly well balanced, although the lockshields on them are almost fully closed, I thing the last one upstairs is about one turn open. But measuring the temperature across the last radiator in the circuit I’m getting back on 12 degrees and that lockshield is fully open. Across the flow / return on the boiler I’m over getting 7 degrees, I’d prefer closer to 12. Still have all the downstairs to do and recheck, but that will do for this evening. I finally turned off the heating circuit and enabled the water circuit. I’m actually getting about 14 degrees across the tank with the lower pump speed, so it’s good to see the water tank is way more efficient at dumping heat than the whole of the radiator system. Hopefully that will mean that the water heats up quickly, then of course I can have my bath….

Ok, after eventually getting up I stripped the valve down properly this time. The mechanism was all a bit bent and the micro switches were missing the blades, this was all probably down to years of heat expansion / contraction though. Nothing really wrong that a bit of plier manipulation and some WD40 didn’t sort out. So then it was on to the actual valve bit itself. It has very little movement, probably 30 degrees at best. So I attached a big adjustable to it and forced it over to the B side, which is water only, I then fired up the boiler. With my posh new differential thermocouple machine I was managing to get a temperature differential of about 20 degrees, so that all looked fine. I then moved the valve over to the A side, which is heating. This is where I thought I had a big problem as I wasn’t getting much of a differential at all, plus at times it was actually negative, so the water was hotter than the heating. I checked all the valve again, free movement, so I was thinking the valve was leaking on one side. Then I had lunch, and that visionary moment, where you think, ah yes, big tit. So what was actually happening was quite simple. On the A side of the valve is the nice very long collection of pipes doing the heating, containing many litres of water. On the B side is quite a short loop just going to the water tank. The water tank contains about 60 gallons of water at about 55 degrees. So what happens when you move the valve to the A side? Well the B side now just contains stagnant water, which is being heated in a massive heat exchanger in the water tank. So as there is no flow, the water tank will now be heating the water, not the boiler, it’s all acting in reverse. So what I did was turn off all the hot water heating on the programmer, then throughout the day I just used all the hot water as normal. Then sure enough when the heating comes on I’m now getting a 30 degree temperature drop across the valve as the B port pipe now contains nothing but cold water. So finally in conclusion, apart from the actuator being a little big old and knackered and could probably do with replacing at some point, there is actually nothing wrong with the valve at all.

Went to Tesco’s picked up food as mother was coming to dinner. Then spent the afternoon in a mixture of cleaning and wine making. I bought a kilo of Strawberries and a huge bag of sugar. Then using my new wine making stuff I proceeded to make a Strawberry fruit wine. Well I now have a bucket of fermenting something or other anyway.

About to have a shower when I decided to go outside and tell the taxi that was waiting that he should actually be at my mothers rather than my house, he read the source and destination the wrong way round. At least that company is cheap.

Jamie was finishing at 8, mother arrived just after 7. I must admit both her and the dog were very well behaved. She only came out with a few dull anecdotes. Managed to get her on a good quality red wine and she enjoyed the food. She only gets fed once a year so good she enjoyed it.

After she went Jamie decided it was then a great time to put the Sonic Meccano together. Getting stickers on the right way round after a couple of bottles of wine was an interesting challenge. Still good fun had by all.

So started the day off fairly early, considering I had the day off. Went to TLC and bought a new central heating programmer after working out the old one was fairly knackered. Got a rather nice Horstmann seven day one, dual channel for water and heating, all LCD, all shiny shiny. Parked up in Cotham and walked into town, it wasn’t that busy considering. Bought a new wall planner. Got back, had lunch. It’s still officially a Monday, so Chicken sandwich it was. Then walked the dog.

Then decided to crack on with replacing the programmer. So started with putting a big hole in the airing cupboard for the cable to go down. This was fine, except the original wiring centre appears to be mounted on some sort of batten and the existing wires are coming through it, so no way on earth I’m going to get behind it, so instead have to come out slightly above it and bring the cable out there, then surface mount it to the wiring centre. Anyway, got the back plate mounted and wired. Then tried to get the timer on, there was no way it wanted to fit. Removed back plate from wall, still no go. Then unwired it all, no chance. So removed all the slot connecting things, then finally it fitted. Turns out that it requires a huge amount of force to get the damn thing to close up and connect properly, so wired it all back again and gave it a big shove, now it was mounted. So back to the wiring centre, I just connected the earth, live and neutral and fired it up, all appeared to be working fine. I used six core and earth cable. Every core was black apart from the earth, but each was individually numbered on the insulation sheath which was very strange. So then removed the old programmer wiring, which ascended somewhere from the kitchen and replaced with the new one. Then removed the old programmer from the kitchen and rewired all that behind a blanking plate. All appears to be working fine, so programmed it up.

My other new gadget arrived today, which is a dual thermocouple temperature reader. This basically means you can clamp a sensor to both flow and return pipes and it will give the temperature differential. I’ve got this at the moment stuck on the A/B outlets of the mid-position valve. Even though it’s going through the internal motions I’m still not convinced it actually works at all, I’m getting very little differential between A/B when it goes through the three modes. I think I’m going to whip the mechanism off the top and check that the valve under it is going through it’s full range of movement. Certainly the spring arm seems to be shot on it.

And there we go, that was my fairly productive day. Christmas day tomorrow. It’s still a Monday though, so salad as usual. I may have a glass or two of wine though.

So this morning started off very much how last night ended, in a great deal of pain. I did have breakfast and kept that down no problem. Got up in the end at about 3PM as the shopping needed to be done. It took several bathroom attempts before I was ready, I still seem to be losing liquid weight out of my arse.

At Tesco at the moment is this ‘videogameathon’ or something, where they are trying to make a browser game in 48 hours. Been there, done that, but many many many years ago. I did smile when I saw all the bottles of Coke and all the Pro-plus pills. Took me back to 25 years ago when perhaps I wasn’t so fucking bitter. There was this kid there who was obsessed by Sonic, he turned up with his parents as Jamie had one of his Sonic Show banners up. How the parents haven’t actually killed him by now is a miracle, talk about geek.

Did the shopping. Came back home and went back to bed with a nice cup of tea and the paper. I’m feeling generally okay except for a massive amount of pain in my kidneys still. I think I’ll watch the end of a film I’ve been slowly getting through then try and make a move on a few things.

Oh yes, the pumping thing. The circulation pump has three settings, it’s always been set to high, I reckon that’s why the radiators have always been a pain in the ass to balance, and probably why there is always a huge amount of air in the system (it sucks it in via the vent). I’ve now set it on medium, heating is now virtually silent, but everything of course now needs balancing again.