It must be Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bulleidboy]

At 7.30am this morning Father Christmas sent five of his BT elves with four vans. We now have a hole in the pavement and a foot deep trench running from said hole, up my front lawn to the house. New ducting has been laid and they are now putting in new cable (the old one - forty four years old had had it!). Now drilling through my lounge wall and we should all be connected up very soon - well that's what they say.

[RogerB]

Fingers crossed for you. Keep the elves away from the Sherry. R-

[teedoubleudee]

Are you going full fibre BB?

[Walkingthedog]

No it’s just the way he walks.

I was wondering about that as well Barry.

[bulleidboy]

All working and back to normal - very neat and tidy job - kept the elves supplied with tea and coffee

Not full fibre yet TWD/WTD. According to the elves all houses in the road will have a fibre connection in 2021. At least we now have new ducting up to the house. The slight drawback was that the original ducting went in when the house was built in 76/77, and it was not now possible to get new cable into the old ducting, so BT into the house now comes into the lounge rather than under the stairs in the hall. New BT broadband hub coming in the next few days - we managed to negotiate a new deal including BT Sport for £10 less than we were paying previously. Also new SKY deal, with hopefully better equipment and £14 a month cheaper than previous contract.

We had a real shake up of providers - can thoroughly recommend Octopus for gas and electricity - now paying hundreds less than before.

Happy BB.

[RAF96]

At a previous house the BT man who had to keep coming back to fix my electric string from the lamppost at the bottom of the drive to my house, which was always going wrong, said....
‘...when they built these houses they laid in cables under the footpaths to each property direct from the green cabinet around the corner. Then they (BT) had a change of mind and put the house feeds in using poles up the close. Why? - who knows....’
What I do know is there was latent infrastructure to my house from the distribution cabinet, but the actual connection was wires on poles which had to be fixed every 12-18 months. Crazy.

[Walkingthedog]

What was the problem with the drop wire from the pole Rob. We have had ours changed once.

[LC&DR]

I hope it goes better for you than it went for me.

All week there has been a drip from the boiler on to the worktop underneath. The water was penetrating into the cupboard underneath. I called British Gas, with whom I have a service agreement and Tuesday afternoon an engineer called. She fixed the leak, but after she had gone I found none of the central heating radiators were warm, and I could not hear the boiler fire up as it usually does. The status lights on the boiler indicated a fault. So I contacted British Gas again and the first return visit they could offer was today, so we have been 24 hours without hot water or heating. So an engineer arrived today, a different one, and she spent two hours sorting it out, including fitting a new pump in the airing cupboard. I am glad to report the central heating is now working (fingers crossed) because this afternoon we had snow, although it didn't settle it was still blooming cold!

I had visions of a freezing Christmas, why does it always go wrong at this time of the year!

What I find infuriating is that nowadays one cannot speak to a human being about faults in anything. (or even to speak to a doctor's receptionist) you end up pressing buttons on the 'phone, or clicking buttons on a web page, and you never really get the options you want.

[bulleidboy]

We had a similar situation a few weeks ago with a water leak above our water softener. Plummer arrived, we told him where the leak was, and let him get on with it. A few minutes later he said the leak was not where we had said, and that a copper pipe had a small perforation, and that is where the water was coming from. He replaced the short length of pipe, and turned the water back on - it was still leaking - from the valve we had told him was leaking. He replaced it and everything was fine - luckily, in this case, he was able to check everything out before leaving. Nothing could be more frustrating than having someone in to repair a fault, and finding you either still have it or another problem has occurred after they have left - and been paid.

[teedoubleudee]

If you want a laugh check out a little diity called "The Gas-Man Cometh" by Flanders and Swan.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v1dvAxA9ib0