Ain't nobody gonna ruin our floor. So we put down plastic dust sheets everywhere. It's sad to cover it up so soon but needs must.
Meanwhile, we'd jumped on the ordering bandwagon and got the washing machine on order sharpish. It arrived right on time, what a joy to behold. It even has a light inside it! If you ignore all the built in door instructions, and indeed all other instructions, they're pretty easy to install. You just screw the water pipe on, plug it in and plop the waster pipe into the one leading out of the building. Hey-presto! You've installed a washing machine and it didn't cost £75.
Admittedly if you were getting a built in one it's a little more involved what with boring holes in your cupboard door to take hinges and stuff. Nothing we haven't done before though.
With all that done the plan was to get the under floor heating wiring centre, well, wired. The principle was easy enough. Take the wire to the boiler, split it and then use the wiring centre to turn the boiler on and off as well as the under floor heating. At the same time an extra socket was going to go in for the washing machine's permanent home.
Beth was out of the house in the afternoon meeting up with the Oxford gals so it would all be a nice surprise upon her return.
Several hours later, cold, tired and hungry at 10pm with no heating it finally coughed into life. It was a rough ride.
Why it was so hard is still unclear. The idea was pretty simple. Take an existing power lead, cut it, do a little bit of wiring then join it back up. That extra bit of wiring was adding some double pole switches and fuses to meet building regulations. You need to be able to turn the boiler off in order to service it. Very sensible. Same for the washing machine and wiring centre. With the fused switches all installed and wired and the power plugged in again the boiler wouldn't turn on. Not for love nor money.
The internet had no solutions. The only means of measuring the presence of electricity, a little neon screwdriver, suggested everything was in order. And yet... Nothing from the boiler. The top came off. The front came off. The motherboard came out. The fuses were all changed. The temperature outside was dropping into low single figures and the inside of the house likewise.
It wasn't so much the lack of heating which was a concern. We only had one room with a radiator which could easily be replaced by a fan heater. It was the lack of hot water which was a worry.
Worcester Bosch's office had shut up shop half an hour ago. The fora on the internet weren't replying fast enough. It all looked dire. The emergency plumbers either only did gas boilers or didn't have anyone available. In the end, one forwarded the call to a chap at home who was willing to walk through the problem from afar. No luck. Everything he suggested had already been tried.
The last port of call was plugging into an extension cable instead of the previous power supply.
What a surprise. It worked.
It's still unclear what wasn't working with the old power cable but it doesn't matter now. Time for some poorly earned dinner. What a waste of a day.