Gas Boiler Safety Check and Other Matters

Our gas boiler needs it's annual safety check. It actually ran out last February. We have the certificate that we had when it was installed. If you read my blog posts on a regular basis, then you will remember we had a new boiler installed in February 2016. We had to go through the Council to get our landlord's address and telephone number in order to get the thing replaced. We hadn't been notified of a telephone number change as we only had a number which wasn't functioning when we tried to call it. Unfortunately the landlord has no idea what his legal responsibilities are regarding the boiler being tested annually and have a safety certificate. I had considered having this done myself, by getting a registered gas engineer do the work, but I have been told by several people that it's the landlord's responsibility. I rang him well over a week ago to ask to have this work done. He didn't seem to know who I was, which was a bit of a worry, but he eventually realised that I was a tenant of his property.  When I had no response from him as to when this work would be carried out I had to ring him again yesterday evening. His response was that he had attempted to contact the engineer who had installed the boiler but couldn't get through and had left a voicemail message. I said that I would contact the Council regarding this matter and if he couldn't get hold of the engineer I would find someone myself. This seems to have done the trick, because he rang me at around 7.45 last night to say that he had spoken to the gas engineer and he would ring me direct to make an appointment to do the gas check for me. I await that phone call this morning. Mr Landlord seems to be under the impression that, because the boiler is relatively new (well, it will be two years since it was installed in February.) and seems unaware of the fact the thing needs a safety check, which appals me as he is the owner of the property and as such has a responsibility to us to have the thing checked for our safety.

I went out to do some shopping in Sainsbury's. Carol got a call from the gas engineer and he's coming to do the gas safety check on Friday morning. So at last that's sorted. Well, it will be completed once the certificate is handed over.

 Wednesday, 3.15 p.m.

As I write this, the gas engineers who installed the boiler have been and done the safety check and it's passed. They were able to come this afternoon instead of Friday. Our landlord will have received a reminder a month before it was due but must have ignored it. No problems so that is done for another year.

Carol does crochet. Since she's been at home, off work sick, she's made Alfie a lovely blanket done in crochet. She made her mum a scarf and I bought her a magazine which had a free kit with it to make a brown bear (called Brian.) As a result of all this she has no end of wool, hooks and other bits and pieces. She wanted a box or at least something to keep the things in and went on Amazon to find a really good kit. Ordered and paid for using debit card. It should have arrived the next day (as we have Amazon Prime we get post and packing paid for as well as fast-track delivery.) We then got an email to say the package wouldn't arrive until Today (Wednesday.) But this morning we had another email telling us that, unfortunately, it had got lost. How or why has it got lost? It got as far as Peterborough and that's as far as it could go. No doubt some employee of Amazon put it in the wrong place, bin, shelf or whatever. We still don't have any idea what happened to this order and as far as I know, neither does Amazon. A complete mystery. Will it ever be found? Could Sherlock Holmes solve the mystery? We have since had a refund, but you would expect it to appear at some time in the future. Watch this space for further revelations.

Boiler Problem . . . Almost Sorted

We spent a particularly cold night. No heating doesn't help. We considered our options. We had mentioned the situation with Mark Sherratt, pastor of our church, Milton Keynes Christian Centre, on Sunday morning, which was before we'd attempted to contact our landlord. This morning we decided to go and see Mark at church and ask for advice as to how we could resolve the problem of the dysfunctional boiler. He said that we had several options, pay for the work which had been booked with British Gas this Friday, go to Smart Move, the rental agency which we'd used originally to rent the house or go to Milton Keynes Council as they were very likely to have our landlord's details on record for Council Tax and other purposes. So, once we'd finished at church we drove into the city centre and parked where we usually park in the multi-storey carpark near Debenham's and walked through the shopping centre towards the Council offices. The receptionist was very helpful and told us we'd need to phone from the council office, as she gave us two numbers to ring. There was a considerable wait as several other people were waiting to use the telephone ahead of us. When we eventually got through, we were informed that they would be able to find our landlord's address in their database and that an officer would need to come to the house to inspect the boiler. More, I think, to prove that what we were telling them about the boiler was accurate before contacting our landlord. Having finished at the Council offices, we walked back into the shopping centre and went to Marks and Spencer's to do a bit of shopping and then returned to the carpark to get to the car and drove home. It was barely minutes after we got in the house when the telephone and the officer from the Council said that he'd be visiting at around 2 o'clock. He didn't actually arrive until 2.30, and had a letter to put through the landlord's door detailing the boiler situation. At around 4.30 the landlord telephoned, having got in from work to discover the letter on his doormat and saying he would attempt to find a boiler repair man to deal with the boiler misfunction. He later rang to say that he would come after 7 o'clock with sufficient cash for us to pay for an engineer who  will come out in the morning and didn't want us to pay ourselves. So, hopefully, by mid-morning we will have some resolution to this whole situation. We now have the landlord's address and telephone number in case of any further problems we may have with the house.

Boiler Breakdown

It's a cold and frosty morning. The boiler decided to play up first thing. It had a red light flashing on it's front, which usually indicates that the gas has run out. We have a pre-payment meter, meaning we have to 'top-up' using  a card for gas and a key for electricity and buying credit for them at either the local shop in Eaglestone or the shop at Garraways in Coffee Hall. I usually do this at the beginning of each month. I had to go out to the bin cupboard, climb on the step-stool and use a small torch we have to see how much credit is on the meter. The card has to be put in the slot on the meter which you have to stretch your arm inside the cupboard as the meter is put in perhaps the most awkward place. It showed up on the digital read-out that it had well over £40 so it wasn't that which was the problem. We tried the boiler again but it steadfastly refused to start. So, we had the prospect of no hot water for baths and washing-up as well as no heat in the house as the central heating system works from the boiler. If it needed repairing we would need an engineer to look at it, which would mean if we went through our landlord it wasn't likely to be fixed any time soon. As we were promised by the landlord that we would have our fence repaired, and still nothing on that (very nearly six months have passed since we signed the tendency agreement with the landlord and moving away from the rental agency.) So, what to do? Ring round to find an engineer who might be able to fix the boiler ourselves or go through our landlord? Fortunately the thing seems to have sorted it self out and is now working. So, I've been able to do the washing-up from last night and the house is relatively warm again. With my heart condition I cannot afford to get too cold. We presume that the boiler needs to be at the correct water pressure to work and this cold snap as interfered with this water pressure.

Now It Can Be Told- Part 2

After a year of our tenancy agreement we had to have our boiler checked. It is a legal requirement that landlords of rented property have the gas boiler checked to make sure it is safe. We got the visit from a plumber to do this job, and we got the certificate saying that the gas boiler was in good working order. We told him at this time that the central heating was not working properly, and we assumed that he would inform Copper Homes and they would get it repaired. Copper Homes were fully aware of the problems with such things as the hole in the kitchen ceiling, at the time we sold the house to them, it was understood that they would fix this problem, as well as doing general maintenance on the house, the guttering needed some repair as there was  constant running water when it rained and the downstairs toilet needed replacing. But we heard nothing from Copper, either in writing or by telephone, that they would deal with these problems.

Things proceeded for the next few months without any further problems, until we got a letter from an agency which stated that we must not pay our rent to Copper Homes any longer, and that we must pay it to them. We didn't think at the time that there was anything odd about this, and duly changed our Direct Debit to pay to this new rental agency. After a few weeks we got a letter from Copper Homes stating that we were not to pay our rent to this other rental agency. So, we accordingly changed the Direct Debit back to Copper. We discovered that one of the directors of the company had left Britain and gone to Australia. There was some sort of dispute with the rest of the board members, but we could never discover what this dispute was about. It was at this point that we became somewhat concerned as we got a letter telling us that the dispute was about who owned our house. Then the 'other' rental agency wrote (we presumed that it was him who used this agency to collect our rent.) to inform us that we must pay THEM and so we had to transfer the Direct Debit back to THEM. As you can imagine, we were getting somewhat annoyed having to keep going back to our bank and changing the Direct Debit details to and fro. 
Meanwhile, the condition of the house was deteriorating rapidly. We were getting more and more rats coming into the house and we could hear them scuttling around in the loft and within the cavity walls. They began to come into the kitchen and steal food, so we had to keep food in boxes and even inside the microwave to prevent it being eaten. Then the rats even ate through a plastic box in which we kept the dogs' food, on on one occasion the rats ate through a plastic chopping board. Also, the state of the kitchen sink was so bad, because any water that was drained away down the plughole, came out on the kitchen floor and eventually lead to the units rotting away. We were helped on this issue, though, as someone from our church kindly came to our aid and repaired the sink so that water would actually drain away outside and not on the floor. As I have also mentioned, the washing machine became inoperable as the rats gnawed through the plastic pipes on the back, so we had to take our laundry to a local company to have it washed. 
These rats got the attention of our two dogs, Poppy and Alfie. They could obviously hear sounds that we couldn't, and Alfie, in particular, would go into the kitchen and stare endlessly at the cupboard near the sink, as he must have been able to hear the high-pitched sound of the rats as they squeaked. Poppy wasn't so effected by the rats, but one presumes that she had some idea that there were intruders in the house.
Carol, meanwhile, decided that enough was enough and decided to ring Copper Homes to try and get them to sort out the various things that needed repairing, informing them, amongst other things, that the boiler wasn't working. By now we were approaching winter and the thought of having no heating was not something we wanted to have to do without. She got a lot of verbal abuse down the telephone from the Managing Director, Neil Brown. He said that the condition of the house was terrible (given to him by the plumber who came to do the checks on the central heating boiler.) and they weren't going to do any repairs until we cleaned the place. I think this may have been due to the state of the kitchen, as we were contending with rats running about and the hole in the ceiling was making the kitchen really dirty as bits of plaster and tile kept falling out of the hole and the ceiling in general was deteriorating very rapidly. If Neil Brown wanted to inspect the property, he was welcome to come to the house and see for himself, but he never came to the house once, even at the time the house was sold to Copper Homes, so I have no idea how he could make such comments when he hadn't seen the house. If they had repaired these things earlier, the condition of the house might not have got so bad.