Sorry to hear that. Hope you at least got something to eat that was Christmassy.

We replaced ours just in case it decided to not cook our christmas dinner. As you say Duncan, too complicated for such a simple process.

I get invited with some others to Christmas at one person's house and two years ago her oven packed up on xmas eve. So the various parts of the meal were cooked at 3 other houses in the village and converged at one. A bonus of inviting nearby friends to dine with you.

This year as her MIL was housebound we all went 5 miles to that house which was a nice change of scene.
As a subject drift I was given a lift by a couple whose dog has an interesting behaviour. He absolutely loves being in the car, definitely not walks, such that he knows their routine and waits by the door on known driving days. Once in the car he hates to leave it except to go into his own home. Then he will bark continually when the car is moving, and we all track the owners movements round the village by the barking. However if someone sits in the rear driver side seat he plonks himself on top of them and is completely silent. He absolutely ignores anyone being in the left rear seat, it only works for the driver's side. The owners can't understand why but he is a rescue dog so somehow must have picked it up from his previous elderly single owner.

The day before Christmas Eve the central heating and hot water boiler stopped working just before the family were due to arrive for Christmas. I am covered by a homecare contract but it was late in the day and I couldn't find anybody to speak to, however, on line I was offered a repair date of the 27th Dec.

Unfortunately I misread the appointment message and had somehow assumed that it was for the morning of the 24th. I didn't realise this until the next morning when I checked my phone messages. Clearly this was not good enough so I decided to call the British Gas emergency help line to see if I could get an emergency repair appointment. I was told that before any assistance could be offered I would have to check at the meter to see what type it was and to switch off the supply. I was also told that before any work could be done somebody from Cadent (British Gas Utilities Contractor) would have to come and check that we were getting gas to the meter. I must admit I couldn't see the point, after all why wouldn't there be gas at the meter.

The situation was a bit like breaking down in a car knowing it is beyond roadside repair but still having to wait for an RAC man to tell you that it can't be repaired at the road and having to wait even longer for the recovery vehicle to arrive.

Still not happy I tried yet another number and finally managed to get to speak to somebody and was given a repair date of the 25th Dec which was acceptable.

Meantime a person from Cadent turned up and checked the meter. I was absolutely gobsmacked when he attached a manometer to a tapping point on the meter and got no reading. He thought that perhaps the little valve was blocked so he poked through with a piece of wire which made no difference. Next he disconnected the supply pipe from the meter, sure enough, not even a whiff of gas. His verdict was that he thought that there could be water in the line and he would call out a crew who would get the water out. Within an hour there were a couple of vans on site with a vacuum pump unit. This was coupled up to the supply to the meter and switched on. I was amazed at how much water was sucked out of the gas main. I reckon there was at least 40 gallons of water in there because it took two men to drag the unit onto the driveway and four to get it off. You could see the water , which was clear, through the transparent tube on the vacuum unit and it ran clear for a long time before you could see the odd bubbles in the line.

Anyway once the line was cleared gas supply resumed and the meter was re-connected and checked out before switching on the central heating.

I was really pleased that the problem hadn't been due to my central heating boiler failing and I was impressed with the speed at which Cadent carried out the work to get us back up and running again. It could have been a bit of a problem with all of the family at home for Christmas. I cancelled the Christmas day and 27th Dec appointments.

The thing that gets me is where the heck did all that water come from.

Crazy wasn't it? Imagine – a union leader working to protect the livelihood of his members.

A friend in Oxfordshire told me the following, which happened to an unpopular 'know-it-all' builder, who had moved into the area, into a large, expensive pile in the country, which he was 'improving'. I think it was just before Christmas.

Said builder had installed one of those glass-fibre septic tanks that look like a monster onion. He knew better than to follow instructions, so didn't bother with the heavy concrete collar around the top of the unit, having buried the 'onion'. The outflow field turned out to be unwisely sited, in a low part of his land. It rained. And rained. The ground got soggy. The septic tank stopped draining, and overflowed. (OK, you know why, but he didn't).

Reasoning that the best thing to do with an overflowing tank is to empty it, that is what he did. The water table being unusually high, the back-fill around the tank being not properly compacted, and lacking the mass of the concrete collar that should have been there, the now empty tank did what physics said it must, and what the displaced volume of water compelled it to, and promptly popped right out of the ground. My, how the locals larfed.

Duncan, we had a similar panic last Xmas, on Christmas Eve morning, wife got up to start the Xmas cooking but was greeted by a strong smell of gas coming from the vicinity of the gas hob. Panic ensued, where were we going to get a gas technician on Xmas Eve. Phoned number three daughter who lives in the same village as us and she said don’t panic her next door but one neighbour was a gas technician and she would see if he was at home. As it happened he had finished work for Xmas, or so he thought, and once situation was explained he arrived complete with tools. Leak was traced to loose union on supply pipe under the hob which had been finger tight since new kitchen install four years previously, so much for Gas Safe certified installers. Problem solved in literally minutes and all the guy would take was £25, and he made a thorough check that there were no further leaks.

Dave W

Daughter and family were over from oz a few years back and a couple of days before Christmas she phoned me at work to say water was running out of the oven all over the kitchen floor (solid fuel range cooker) So no heating water cooking, place was like a morgue!! I ended up disconnecting the circs and the chimney and putting it on its side to weld a patch on the boiler fortunately it was ok so back together again and dinner was cooked in time,we bought a new Rayburn in the following summer so the weld lasted a few months. the water was crystal clear and had been in for over thirty years so I re used in and topped it up with more fernox and when I fitted the Rayburn i used the same water again topping up with more fernox so its nearly forty years old

I wonder how long an earth pit oven would take to do a turkey?

Mike

Ages.

You could deep fry it: LINK