We developed a leaky hot tap the other day, annoying but no big disaster. But then people started to really do the tap up tightly and so it got worse. The leak elevated itself to ‘must fix a.s.a.p. status’ when it was dripping at such a rate the boiler was on constantly. So I spent this morning fixing it, the problem was the tap is one of the origional taps that came with the house – so ~30 years old. This means it was gunked up and very stuck. After about an hour I managed to shift it though, GRRRRRR! It’s all fixed now though.

I then spent the afternoon clearing out the garage, three more bags of crap, bringing the total up to eleven bags in total. It’s looking pretty good now. I put the bike locks on the wall so we can FINALLY get them out of the living room. Just need to get the council to take all the big crap out, put a better lock on the door, paint the door and frame and fix the roof. So should soon be finished, sigh.

As for the central heating, well that seems to be working all right. Haven’t found any more leaks, yet.

We are having our central heating installed at the minute. HMMM, its a bit of a mixed bag so far. All the new radiators have been put up and they look nice, they are new and shiney 🙂 All of the pipework has been done, well that’s what we thought. When the guy turned it all on and let it heat up I went for a nose around to see how good a job he had done and lo and behold it was spurting water out in the loft, grrrr. So the guy fixed that and then spent about an hour in the loft, turns out one of the pipes has a hole in it and couldn’t be fixed. All this means that I have to take ANOTHER day off work and sit around while they fix it.

So the guy came round to put more traps down (I really reccommend him if you have pests) yesterday morning and within a few hours we heard the characterisic thud of a trap going off. But then there was more noise, a clanging and dragging noise, the little loveable rouge had got caught in the trap and was dragging it around. So I called the guy, he was miles away but because the thing was probably in pain he said he would come round and deal with it. About 5 minutes before he arrived there was another thud and the noises stopped, he must have walked into another trap, or so we thought. When we went in the loft we found two empty traps, well almost empty, one had a squirrel foot in it! Some how by setting the second trap off he had escaped (without his foot). Quite annoying you may think, but it gets worse, whilst stuck in the first trap it took it upon itself to get revenge and knawed through a cable. So we had to call out an emergency electrician, luckily our insurance covers this, so we got the wire patched. But it is going to have to be replaced sometime in the near future.
All we need to do now is to get the hole fixed, this will get done today, even if I have to kidnap a builder to do it.

As for the squirrel, well it’s footless and probably had quite a substancial electric shock so I don’t know what’s happened to it. It could still be up there, it could have moved on thinking our loft is quite a hazardous place, or it could be lying dead somewhere. I know what I hope has happened to it.

We have some un-invited guests of the squirrel variety in our house at the minute. The little beasts have been clambering up our wall and into a hole in our barge boards.

They have been living in our loft for about a week and in that time they have been elevated to arch-nemesis status. Various attempts to rid ourselves of them have all failed. I tried:

the logical way – I tried to block up the hole they come in, it’s in a very awkward place so this is impossible from inside.

the humane way I. – a plug which sends out a noise that irritates them so they move on (bollocks).

the humane way II. making lots of noise to scare them off, ranging from going up there lots and making noise, to making them listen to three counties radio all day!

Then, after beginning to make more noise every morning I found that they have been eating the wires up there, time to get the professionals in.

We eventually went with these guys. They were the only people would come out on Saturday. It cost us £75 and was pretty quick, it took less than a day to have them killed.

Now the next step is to go and inspect the damage to the wires, lets hope I can fix it and we don’t need an electrician.

There’s more squirrels! Just heard some scurrying so had a look in the loft, sat in silence for about 10 minutes before one popped its head out. Will have to get the guy out again tomorrow.

I hate squirrels.