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The grumpy thread


outlaw118

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48 minutes ago, Parky said:

Bowls of water in the microwave, kettle on overtime, four saucepans of water on the hob....takes a long time to produce a lukewarm shallow bath when your builder can’t be arsed to fit an immersion heater that is specified in the house brochure....

A tin bath in the garden over a fire pit isn’t looking like such a stupid idea!

Surely if your builder is so full of hot air, you could use him to heat your water and the house... 

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It is surprising how you take this stuff completely for granted and realise just how screwed you are without it.

When I had my bathroom redone a few years back it was out of action for a week.  Then I used to go for a swim every morning and shower there before work which was ok so I might revert to that again

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15 hours ago, Parky said:

Boiler man came.  Despite everyone else saying I have to have a Combi, it’s the law, etc, this fella said “no, you can have a condenser.  Much cheaper, uses existing fittings, will fit without modifying anything significant, we can put in a Vaillant one on Tuesday for £2200”

Would rather not have to shell out but needs must. Fact is I would have had to get the boiler serviced as part of the sale and any engineer would have condemned it (this thing is fucked, I am amazed it worked at all).

Only problem is hot water.  There is an immersion switch next to the hot water tank, but no immersion element in the tank.  All my neighbours have one, the builder must have had a standard tank and whacked it in my place.  Thanks Bellwinch you tight fisted fuckers.

Honestly the build quality of these newer homes is bloody awful

 

The way to look at this. One it should lower your green certificate as this will be cleaner* than the previous one.

It will look good on any sales waffle. You care about maintenance and a new boiler is certainly much better than one that is x years old.

Have you tried to purchase and then install it yourself? I have done that twice. Once in the UK with a back boiler and more recently here in Spain with a kitchen "Ascot" If the routing of the gas pipe and exhaust are the same no issues. Although maybe not 100% in keeping with any regulations.

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4 hours ago, PhilA said:

Tropical Depression Nineteen is due to be a tropical storm and be here Monday.

Great.

I've had enough crappy weather this year.

Time to board the doors up again.

 

Again.

 

Phil

At what point do you just fit hinged shutters to the windows? Oh, you said doors.

I sometimes feel a bit miserable about the weather in Scotland, but I'm thankful I don't have to deal with things like that! Best of luck to you.

 

My grump today is very minor. I need to unblock the passenger side washer jet on the 316 before its MOT on Monday, and last night I discovered the bulb that illuminates the heater controls has blown. Not like replacing that bulb is hard.  Two phillips head screws to get to it. Got the rear section of the exhaust replaced yesterday with 17-Coffees' help though. :D

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2 hours ago, Supernaut said:

At what point do you just fit hinged shutters to the windows? Oh, you said doors.

I sometimes feel a bit miserable about the weather in Scotland, but I'm thankful I don't have to deal with things like that! Best of luck to you.

 

My grump today is very minor. I need to unblock the passenger side washer jet on the 316 before its MOT on Monday, and last night I discovered the bulb that illuminates

shutters to the windows? Oh, you said doors.

I sometimes feel a bit miserable about the weather in Scotland, but I'm thankful I don't have to deal with things like that! Best of luck to you.

My grump today is very minor. I need to unblock the passenger side washer jet on the 316 before its MOT on Monday, and last night I discovered the bulb that illuminates the heater controls has blown. Not like replacing that bulb is hard.  Two phillips head screws to get to it. Got the rear section of the exhaust replaced yesterday with 17-Coffees' help though. :D

the heater controls has blown. Not like replacing that bulb is hard.  Two phillips head screws to get to it. Got the rear section of the exhaust replaced yesterday with 17-Coffees' help though. :D

The house has shutters, the garage doors are 15' tall and rotten as a 1977 Mini. They need bracing against wind load.

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Getting hacked off with my usual garage now.  I know they're swamped at the moment and are down on staff...but my car has been sitting with all the remedial work done for a week and two days now just waiting for them to do the bloody MOT retest.

...After almost three weeks after dropping it off to have said work done, they farmed it out to someone else because they were never going to get to it.

I stick with them because their work is bloody good and they never overcharge...in fact I've forced them to take more money than asked on occasion.  However there comes a point where even I start to get impatient and feel like they're taking the piss.

Sadly the only other two garages nearby I'd consider taking the car to have a >14 day queue for MOTs right now apparently...so it's not as though I can just grab the keys and go somewhere else.

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1 hour ago, Zelandeth said:

Getting hacked off with my usual garage now.  I know they're swamped at the moment and are down on staff...but my car has been sitting with all the remedial work done for a week and two days now just waiting for them to do the bloody MOT retest.

...After almost three weeks after dropping it off to have said work done, they farmed it out to someone else because they were never going to get to it.

I stick with them because their work is bloody good and they never overcharge...in fact I've forced them to take more money than asked on occasion.  However there comes a point where even I start to get impatient and feel like they're taking the piss.

Sadly the only other two garages nearby I'd consider taking the car to have a >14 day queue for MOTs right now apparently...so it's not as though I can just grab the keys and go somewhere else.

I wouldn't stand for that at all to be honest, regardless of how good the work is, if it was my car I'd be kicking up a holy stink, there must be some other garages with mot availability surely, it really doesn't matter where you take it as its just a test, hell even Kwik Fit must have some availability, my 3 most local ones all have tests available on Monday.

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I got to the point I couldn’t be arsed with jobs on the car, so I farmed a lot of work out. After a succession of half arsed jobs I’ve realised it is actually less agg to do it yourself. Even if it means buying a £100 tool and fucking about on the driveway it’s becoming apparent you can’t get a half decent job done at the places local to me. 

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7 hours ago, Remspoor said:

The way to look at this. One it should lower your green certificate as this will be cleaner* than the previous one.

It will look good on any sales waffle. You care about maintenance and a new boiler is certainly much better than one that is x years old.

Have you tried to purchase and then install it yourself? I have done that twice. Once in the UK with a back boiler and more recently here in Spain with a kitchen "Ascot" If the routing of the gas pipe and exhaust are the same no issues. Although maybe not 100% in keeping with any regulations.

It crossed my mind as Dad and I are more than capable but when it comes to Gas it is safer just to let a registered authorised guy do it.

As part of the house sale the boiler needed a gas safety certificate which it never would have got, but even if it had a sharp eyed surveyor might have picked up on it so could have been used to negotiate a couple of grand off the sale price anyway.

When we fitted my gas Hob years ago we had to have an engineer come out to safety check it.  He was a half blind ex alcoholic with terrible DT’s who glanced at the pipework, said “yeah fine, here’s the cert, that’ll be £50 mate”.   I now had a gas safety cert from a registered engineer so the insurance was now happy.  They wouldn’t have been had they seen him..

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42 minutes ago, sierraman said:

I got to the point I couldn’t be arsed with jobs on the car, so I farmed a lot of work out. After a succession of half arsed jobs I’ve realised it is actually less agg to do it yourself. Even if it means buying a £100 tool and fucking about on the driveway it’s becoming apparent you can’t get a half decent job done at the places local to me. 

Yup.

I traced a leak on the Saab's exhaust recently... to a weld on the new flexi joint I got a garage to put in, and they charged rather handsomely for it. I mean, come on. FFS.

That, plus the garage who did the remedial work for its MOT back in July putting in handbrake cables but not adjusting them up at all (but it still somehow passed). Actually, the MOT site shows it as passing an MOT the day before they said they got the handbrake cables in...

 

 

I've almost always done as much as I can myself (or on a mate's driveway), and I'll continue doing that!

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16 minutes ago, Parky said:

It crossed my mind as Dad and I are more than capable but when it comes to Gas it is safer just to let a registered authorised guy do it.

As part of the house sale the boiler needed a gas safety certificate which it never would have got, but even if it had a sharp eyed surveyor might have picked up on it so could have been used to negotiate a couple of grand off the sale price anyway.

When we fitted my gas Hob years ago we had to have an engineer come out to safety check it.  He was a half blind ex alcoholic with terrible DT’s who glanced at the pipework, said “yeah fine, here’s the cert, that’ll be £50 mate”.   I now had a gas safety cert from a registered engineer so the insurance was now happy.  They wouldn’t have been had they seen him..

You need to register the boiler with gas safe to get your building reglations compliance certificate. You'll need that to sell your house, not a 'safety certificate' It's purpose is to stop any diy experts and cowboys from fitting their own boiler and killing people. 

Nearly every regulation we adhere to is because their was a fatality leading up to it.

I'm not half blind ot an alcohic either.

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12 hours ago, chadders said:

We were on oil when the First Gulf War started so we've paid our dues, having to forage wood to keep the house vaguely warm that winter for our new baby.

I was in short trousers; was there really a supply issue or just price gouging by opportunist profiteering gits?

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53 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

I was in short trousers; was there really a supply issue or just price gouging by opportunist profiteering gits?

The latter.

 

See how much they sucked out the ground since and at what rate- particularly when Russia decides to have a price war pissing match with them like they did at the end of last year.

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9 hours ago, MorrisItalSLX said:

Corolla just killed its gearbox to death, now stuck in park on the driveway.

Couldn’t have happened at a better time, starting in a new position at work doing a fixed 5.5 days a week rather than my previous flexible 4 days a week.

Cross fingers, hope it is just the selector linkage...

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6 hours ago, sierraman said:

I got to the point I couldn’t be arsed with jobs on the car, so I farmed a lot of work out. After a succession of half arsed jobs I’ve realised it is actually less agg to do it yourself. Even if it means buying a £100 tool and fucking about on the driveway it’s becoming apparent you can’t get a half decent job done at the places local to me. 

To be honest the vast majority of the work I do the majority of my own work.  I've just got a rule that if it involves taking apart suspension assemblies that it gets farmed out to a garage.  If bolts are going to shear off, get cross threaded, bushes refuse to go in etc... I'd rather it happened up on someone else's four post lift with a full set of tools to tackle the problem than on my driveway.  Been there, done that, immobilised my car and spent a week fighting to change a ball joint that should have taken an hour...

Exhaust work also gets farmed out generally...simply because I utterly despise doing it. 

Seems to be quite s rush on MOTs at the moment.  Though I could probably go to Kwik-Fit I'd really, really rather not.  Especially after they charged me £350 for work they never did back in 2012.  It's also "fun" taking a 24 year old Citroen to a non classic-friendly garage for an MOT.

It's never good when you have to tell the tester no less than four times that the handbrake does work just fine...but they're never going to get any reading if they keep testing the rear wheels.

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5 hours ago, Asimo said:

Cross fingers, hope it is just the selector linkage...

1 hour ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

.....or low fluid level?

Selector is moving at the gearbox end and fluid still showing on the dipstick.

It was slipping in first under any load and now will not shift out of park, also there is fluid on top of the gearbox from a breather. Diagnosis is not good.

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