Worcester (Bosch) Greenstar HE Combi Boiler question

[nemo]

Sounds like some of the workmen who've been up here! :o)

[nemo]

I don't want everyone living in my flat. It'd be far too overcrowded!

Nemo (Still confused)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

No it's not. You may DIY in your own home if competent.

[nemo]

The flow from the kitchen tap seems reasonable, but because of its constricting nozzle and a sharp 90% downturn at the end of the spout, has a terrible whistle. That's another thing I've been complaining to the buggers about. It sets off my Tinnitus something rotten!

The pratt who designed the tap obviously knew all about what would look trendy and fashionable, but knew bugger-all about hydrodynamics!

Add to that the tiny sink, banging waste pipe, gritty paintwork, crooked architraves, a badly cracked kitchen unit that was patched up and used anyway and could have fallen off the wall onto my head!! - and the floor covering bubbling up, and I'm beginning to think a bunch of chimpanzees on heroin could have done a better job!

Not to mention a long stream of bullshit that Private Walker or Dell Boy would have been proud of!

Nemo

[nemo]

This man does indeed live in a flat!

It's in Crowndale Court, Somers Town, London and the block was built in

1958. Bricks over a concrete and RSJ frame construction. Very solid. Too damned solid. You can hear a coin drop two floors up!

And now they also want to use a diamond drill to drill a 4" holes through the load-supporting concrete beams above the kitchen and bathroom windows to fit the extractor fans! They say the regulations allow this as long as the hole is in the bottom 1/3rd of the beam. Compare the expense of this with fitting the fans in the window panes as usual.

On a DIY programme on TV they said the regs forbade drilling any sort of hole in a load-bearing member.

I think it's actually a crafty way of demolishing the block to put up a hotel. We're a two minute walk from the Cross Channel Rail Link!

Nemo

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Much as I decry combis, even the worst should do better than that.

[Doctor Evil]

You have never seen one, or seen one in action. Have a look at the Alpha CD50. Must niceness to be seen.

[nemo]

'Makers' aren't just plumbers. They're a general contractor and are doing the whole lot - new kitchens, bathrooms and toilets and decs to communal staircases etc. And actually, the plumbers have been pretty good, as have most of the skilled guys.

As I said, apart from the low flow-rate the boiler is fine. I've just had my first gas bill since it was fitted and it's about 30% less for this time of year.

It's just that we've had so much bullshit from some of the workmen, the Site Manager and the Council and broken promises from the consulting architect, Sprunt, re: what we were getting, that we're gravely suspicious of any rumour alleging we're being ripped off.

There was also a huge amount of mistrust generated by the way they handled the "Options Appraisal" part of the process, with a survey that would have conned us into voting for major works without realising we'd be moved out for them! The consultant was CAPITA in those days, which explains a lot.

In the end we formed a working group and took the survey over. We weren't supposed to know we could do that - and when our fully informative survey came back - surprise, surprise - a huge majority had voted for Option One, which was as much of the package as could be done without us having to be moved out. We'd have ended up spread all over the country with the housing shortage in London!

And then, just before the works were due to start, the Council's new Project Manager started acting with extreme hostility to the Working Group and more-or-less bullied it into non-existence - or rather it's down to one person now. Me!

It is as it's always been - the usual "You thick tenant - me big professional" routine - except we've got all sorts of professionals on this estate - even the one and only lady Goldsmith of the City of London! - and every other art, craft, trade and profession going as well. (Except the oldest. We did have one of those but she got evicted! ;o)

Makers and the Council still choose not to accept this and instead like to go by the right-wing press stereotypes of council tenants, i.e., single mums who had their babies deliberately to get a flat and are on benefits and drugs and families consisting of hooligans and criminals! - and when they realise this ain't so, they behave as though it's our fault!

Add to that the fact that the Council Officers involved live out in the sticks with large mortgages around their necks, have to commute to their work in smelly, overcrowded trains and hate our guts because we live in low(ish) rent, central London properties, and you can see what we're up against.

I really resent this attitude. I didn't get this flat because of any privilege or scam. I inherited the tenancy after my mother died, and believe me, I'd much rather be out in the sticks paying off a large mortgage like them with her still around!

Sorry for the tome, but these things do have to be said, especially for anyone thinking of employing Makers and for any other Council tenants about to find themselves in the same predicament! Our leaseholders were interested in using Makers at first. They ain't now!

Oh, yes. And one of our leaseholders is Lloyd Newson. You might have seen his modern dance film a few weeks ago on Channel 4. He started here as a "thick tenant" too!

Nemo

[Doctor Evil]

[Doctor Evil]

I know what you mean. This one should be locked up.

[Doctor Evil]

What is the cold water kitchen tap like? Is that a dribble? It the combi fed from the tank? If so get it onto the cold water mains.

[Doctor Evil]

But you still should be locked up though.

[Doctor Evil]

That all sounds very sad.

[Doctor Evil]

The combi should be delivering approx 10 litres/minute. Get them back to fix it. Capita are a cowboy rip-off organisation preying on local councils. They do the council tax collections for many councils and also own the bailiff companies that step in too. They are quick to bring in bailiffs for quite trivial amounts owed, as they make millions all the way at other people's misery.

This garbage about paying by the mile for cars means that people are faced with bills, once again people will not be able to pay and the likes of Capita and its bailiffs will make millions at our expense - they make a LOT of money. All needless. Petrol should have a higher tax at the pump. The more you travel the more tax you pay. Simple really. The tax taken at source, no collection admin, no bailiffs. Council tax is also needless.

Don't let the bastard grind you down. Keep a diary, and demand reports.

[nemo]

Capita are a cowboy rip-off organisation preying on local councils.

I agree with everything you say, and particularly on petrol - but Tony B'liar is going to do the opposite with Road Pricing and he'd rather waste a fortune on new technology instead of just having the Treasury increase the duty and organise how to distribute the cash. Bloody stupid.

Putting all the tax on petrol will also encourage people to buy more economical and environmentally-friendly cars. Road pricing won't. It's daft!

Anyway, once the cat was out of the bag the Council realised the game was up and ditched CAPITA, after spending about £120K on them!

The cat was CAPITA's survey report which they tried to keep secret, and which we managed to publish to, well, half the estate at least.

The only reason we managed to do that was because I still had my copy. I was a delegate at the meeting where it was presented. We all got them, and then at CAPITA's behest, the Chair of our Tenant Management Co-operative tried to seize them back! - in my case literally. The bastard chased me down Euston Road trying to get me to hand it over! Nearly got me run over too! Another delegate stuffed it down the front of her jacket and threatened to cry "Rape!" if he tried to get at it!

(Our Tenant Management Co-operative were in cahoots with CAPITA and the Council at the time - except for me - and if I hadn't been letting everyone know what had been going on in committee etc., we might now indeed be spread all over the country! I've never been forgiven for that to the extent that I still get zero service and maximum harassment from our estate staff!)

Then when I took a really close look the report it was obvious why they wanted it kept away from tenants! For every single piece of work however minor, even electrical rewiring, they said we'd have to be 'decanted' (moved out)! That's what they didn't want us to realise. And when I suggested that the new survey document should tell people which bits of work they'd have to move out for, the mealy-mouthed little cow of a Council officer, Jacqui Connors, said, "We can't do that. It will alarm the tenants"! Her saying that alarmed us more when I let everyone know and galvanised us into action. We even ended up in the Camden New Journal holding a banner reading, "No To The Bulldozers!"

(Maiden Lane Estate - the beautiful almost Art Deco one that leaks and has 'concrete cancer' north of Kings Cross - found out about what they were in for in a much more dramatic way. They got so sick of being told rubbish that they chased the Council officer off the estate and seized his briefcase with all the stuff in it!)

CAPITA even tried to exploit the Disability Discrimination Act to get us out. A dispicalble thing to do! They pretending that all doors - front doors and internal - would have to be widened for wheelchairs *on all floor* and that towers would have to be built for larger lifts for the same reason - and - surprise, surprise, we'd all have to move out for this as well!

The Councillor I mention dealt with disability issues at the time and he pointed out that the Act only required this sort of provision in new buildings. In existing ones, the Act has to be applied only as far as is practicable.This is still echoed by a set of Public Servise ads on radio and TV from time to time.

To cut a long story short: CAPITA disappeared with £120K of CT payers' money, the amount of cash we were promised shrunk from £12.6Million to £3.4Million, and Hunt Thompson Architects were appointed for the next stage - the surveying and planning - and for the final stage, the Working Group itself had a say in the choice of the next firm of architects, traipsing all over London looking at work they'd done and being present at the meeting where they did their presentations.

HTA and Sprunt were neck-and-neck re: quality and tenant-friendliness but Sprunt's tender was less and by then HTA had begun sending a rep to the WG's meetings who was a snob and just talked down to us as if we were thick tenants again! - so Sprunt got it. Both HTA and Sprunt had/have their faults, but these pale into insignificance compared with what CAPITA tried to do to us!

BTW. A Councillor, now retired, who was also a barrister, used to refer to CAPITA as the government's asset-strippers!

My Inbox and Sent Items folders are my diary. Everything re: this project and a lot of other stuff re: community safety etc. goes to the person responsible and to my Ward Councillors, one of whom at least, is very good at laying down the law and getting things done.

[nemo]

It's all off the mains via a non-return valve or a pressure regulator, depending on who you ask! That's how dumb they are!

Whatever it is, it makes a strange, irritating almost stereo low groaning noise at the end of the toilet cistern's fill and when there's a tap on very low. This is another defect they don't want to attend to!

All the cold taps are fairly fierce which is OK.

The kitchen and hand-basin hot taps are reasonable but this is more down to them having nozzle filters and smaller bores which are backing up the pressure, giving the appearance of a higher flow-rate if you get what I mean. It's just the bath hot tap that's showing the true lousy rate of flow.

There's a separate stop-c*ck under the bath for it and that's full on. I've just checked - although the whole system is festooned with small, screwdriver-operated valves for some reason.

[nemo]

Narr. It was luverleee. Virtually no muggings. No gun culture. No drug culture. No pushers shooting each other in front of little kids. Kids behaved themselves. Music was for everyone in those days too - popular, light and classical - not just nasty aggressive music for nasty aggressive youngsters to identify with and suffer permanent hearing-loss from (It's true.) - and female vocalists all sounding the same and singing like there're spiny cacti soaked in Tabasco Sauce up their arses!

And yes, we said "there are'" and "there're" in those days too - not just "there's" for singular *and* plural. I wonder where that originated, too rass clart! :o) - and we knew where apostrophes went in those days and why!!

And there was virtually no peer pressure! You did as you liked. The worse I got was "Why don't you have a quiff in your hair?" - and that only once. (It's still back-combed and has been in a pony-tail for years. Sod fashion. It keeps it out of the way and saves a fortune on haircuts!)

And there were creative hobbies too. Nowadays, would a working-class youngster dare to tell his/her peers that s/he has a railway layout s/he's built himself, s/he's into electronics, plays the violin or that s/he paints?

There's so much equality about these days that I'm supposed to say "his/her" but so little respect for the different things people choose to do in their spare time.

Nowadays, the poor little buggers get beaten up just for wearing the wrong trainers for heaven's sake, and that's at a time when large numbers of them are obese precisely because they don;t train! And in my day the fore-runners (pun) of trainers were a purely utilitarian gym-shoe called a Plimsoll, invented by the same guy who came up with the line on ships which shows how low in the water they are. He got freeboard and lodging for that idea. (pun.)

There were downsides too of course. Medicine was much more primitive. I've had a few things go wrong in the last few years which might well have killed me in the 50s.

Beer was only a % or two alcohol if you were lucky and Real Ale was unheard of and cider was a joke! The price of a bottle of wine was extortionate and if you drunk it you were considered a poof!

There were the London smogs of course, when people died. Coal fires were nice and cosy but totally buggered the environment in those days. There was no Health and Safety at Work Act so bosses could put workers into all sorts of danger and just fire them if they protested or when they were injured or became ill. And there were no food labelling regulations. You just didn't know what you were eating. I've been Vegan since around 1968 and couldn't have done without those.

[nemo]

Does a Corgi guy have to inspect it though?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You weren't around at the start of rock and roll, then?

[EricP]

No you have certified yourself as being Competent.

So when the front wall of your house blows off, taking out the bus queue of kids, you can confidently tell the fuzz that the manslaughter charges will be well defended.