Thursday, April 01, 2004
Poisson D'Avril today. All the kids at school run around sticking paper fishes on each others back. The French April Fool.
Spent most of yesterday dismantling the hot water boiler and the labyrinth of pipes. Since Xmas we have noticed the flow rate of the hot supply reducing very slowly. This week it started to get bad enough to starve water from the tap if a person in another gite was using the tap. Fortunately we only have some friends staying and he is a plumber. What luck. Anyway boiler in bits yesterday, and we found a major scale build-up. Cleared the scale but the problem persisted. This morning repeated the exercise and found that the 60cm internal supply tube in the boiler was solid with calcium. Amazing it worked at all. Lots of prodding with sticks, wire etc. and bingo. Seems that the magnesium anode (which prevents scale build up) has not been replaced in 6 years (since new). New anode on order and I just had the BEST shower ever after. The jet was so strong it was almost painful.
Canceled the boiler service man who was due to turn up tomorrow.
Good French lesson in Dinan this afternoon. I was the only person to turn up so I had excellent 1-2-1 tuition.
French Fact #2: You get huge personal tax reliefs for having three or more children. Builds the population to pay for all the pensioners.
| 7:40:19 PM
