Boiler News

I am from England. I live in Sweden. In England we fear employing contractors to do little jobs on / in our houses because, by and large, they are fucking useless. Well, in Sweden, they are exactly the same, except that they don't insist on having a portable music system everywhere that they work.

As I mentioned below, I have been expecting my new boiler to arrive (and be fitted). The boiler arrived on time at 9:45 yesterday morning. Unfortunately, the plumbers didn't arrive until 24 hours later, did 2 hours work, trashed the house, then buggered off again.

Swedish boilers are big things - they run on trees, as opposed to gas, and so they don't just hang on a wall in the corner of your kitchen. They require a boiler room, two massive tanks of water (1.5 tonnes of water, in my case), two pumps, miles of piping and a 200 litre (bloody big....) expansion tank. One would expect that, with that much bulky hardware to deal with, a degree of planning would be involved but I was very impressed with my local plumber (we'll refer to him as "Kenneth", because that's his name) when he paid me a visit to assess the job. He was so good that he was able to spend all of approximately 25 seconds working out what was required. In my case, I also asked him to remove the 3000 litre oil tank which is taking up a lot of space in the boiler room (now required for my two 750 litre water tanks and 200 litre expansion vessel). "No problem", he said, but in Swedish, of course.

Imagine my surprise, today, when Kenny's two oppos informed me that the oil tank would be removed "after" they have finished fitting all of the other gear. So down to the cellar went the boiler, the two massive tanks and the expansion tanks. After a long period of silence from the boiler room, they emerged to tell me that, surprisingly (to them), it was a bit "tight" in there and maybe the oil tank should be removed first. Only problem is, the oil tank job is the responsibility of a specialist contractor (it contains environmentally hazardous diesel) so now nothing more can happen until they turn up (allegedly "tonight") oh, and a another problem.......they have filled the room with all of the new equipment, plus all the crap leftover from the old installation and the old boiler, so now it is nigh on impossible for the other contractor to get at the tank to remove it.

Still, they seem like nice blokes.