ewt | Mar. 7th, 2005

I seem to have done some sort of badness to the boiler. Not my boiler, that is; the chickenlady's boiler.

I found the circuit breaker okay so major appliances like refrigerator and freezer and computer are now working. I've turned the boiler off, but in doing so managed to touch something I probably shouldn't have. Now hot water is coming out a pipe in the wall (outside the house), the pressure indicator on the boiler is falling and I don't know how to stop it (no, twiddling the knob the other way doesn't seem to help).

If any of you with knowledge of this sort of thing are awake and feel like getting in touch, it would be really great. If the water doesn't stop then I'll have to shut the water off, I guess, which could be an adventure in itself.

I was just writing an e-mail to someone along the lines of 'but I've done enough for tonight, I'll get an early start tomorrow and have the sleep now instead'. Guess not. Grah. Not to mention if I can't fix it there will be no heating and hot water, which will be several levels of suck.

EDIT: Still water. Pressure not falling anymore. This means water is coming from water supply, going into boiler, and going outside. NOT WANT. So, there will be a valve somewhere which I twiddle, yes? And it isn't the grey one, becuase the grey one lets the pressure go up and down.

Le sigh.

SECOND EDIT:

shevek happened to be in London tonight after a fencing thing and came and turned the boiler on and peered at it and the manual lots. There is still water coming out, although maybe not as much as before (he says significantly less, but I can't really tell; it still feels like X amount of wet, to me, I'd have to time it and measure it, or be able to see it, to tell). The knob I shouldn't have twiddled is some sort of spring valve. The pressure went way down but is going up again. He thinks it will probably either settle, or require re-calibrating by an engineer during working hours; either way it will have to do until morning.

I need to learn more about how these things work, so that when they go wrong I know how to deal with it. I did okay with the circuit breaker, I guess, and didn't panic too badly, but I simply don't have the techical and mechanical knowledge to do this stuff on the fly, and although I could probably figure it out from the manual it would take a few hours of methodical reading and I wasn't quite settled enough to undertake that.

Today I have learned what a stopcock looks like, what a stopcock doesn't look like, and that if a brass nut looks like it just connects a copper pipe to another copper pipe, it probably does. I have gained a physical appreciation for why insulated pipes are good. I have probably created an ice sculpture of ladder, bucket, mop and several pairs of wellington boots. I have used the camera in my phone to take a picture and send it to someone else for the first time ever. I have remembered that turning off the mains water is bad if the temperature is likely to be below freezing, and declined to do so. I have considered turning on the oven and gas rings in order to get warm.