Brrrrrrr....

I really don't like to complain about random setbacks we have in London.  It feels wrong to disparage this experience of living in one of the world's greatest cities with so many interesting and engaging sights to see.  Which is why I don't talk about the annoying bits on this blog.  However, I will make one exception this time ;)

We've been having issues with our boiler which heats both our water and the registers throughout the house.  Since late last fall, the boiler couldn't keep any pressure.  We had plumbers come out at least four times to jog the system back into working order. It took another couple visits to diagnose the actual problem, get approval from our landlord and fix the issue.  Thankfully, we now have new hardware on all the registers in all the rooms (installed two weeks ago) and the pressure has been maintaining.  

Though we thought the problem resolved, we were disappointed then, to wake up last Saturday morning to no heat anywhere!  I think we probably lost it sometime Friday night, even. The worst part about losing heat was that we knew we couldn't contact our rental management company until Monday morning- we had learned over Christmas break that this "wasn't an emergency." Luckily, the weather turned out okay on Saturday; it was about 55 degrees, but extremely windy.  Sunday, we didn't fare as well: we spent our day at coffee shop, pub, coffee shop, pub (LOVE those pub fireplaces!) just to not sit around a frigid home.  Chewie was mostly unaffected, but did spend a bit more time under his blankets... 

Monday, after NUMEROUS phone calls back and forth between the management company and the plumber, the plumbers got here around 2 p.m. By 2:30, the problem was diagnosed, but they had to travel about a half hour away to find the new replacement part.  Not to mention, they were trying to get approval from our landlord for the fix... who is out of the country.  The plumber was nice enough to take pity on a frozen Nellie and agree to replace the part anyway.  Once found, the part was installed by 4:30 p.m. and heat was finally on it's way!  The issue had something to do with the pilot light misfiring and I took a picture of the part that needed replacing.  It looks totally scary, but the plumber assured me that we wouldn't have exploded ;)  

yikes, right?!? i just had to share this pic!

I really hate being cold, it's one of my biggest pet peeves. Sunday night, I actually wore a scarf to bed... go ahead and laugh ;)  But, I will say though we were uncomfortable, the situation was tolerable- annoying, but tolerable.  We got creative in keeping clean using water boiled on the stove, I drank lots of tea and cuddled under blankets. And now the heat is back, I took a scalding shower last night and all's well that ends well.