Chapter 35: A central heating shambles and a crooked Aussie company

And dishonest Gas Board officials...

As mentioned in the previous chapter, an Australian firm, Southern Cross Heating, had been contracted to install a central heating system in our recently-purchased maisonette, 16 Little Ealing Lane, South Ealing. Here’s what happened…

Extract from family letter dated March 12, 1972:

CONNED

The Australian installation firm — much praised by the Gas Board official — took twice as long as planned to install the system, chiefly because some of the parts weren’t available. After two days of false alarms, we were told that the system would definitely be operational the next day.

About lunchtime the engineer began putting water in the system. About 15 minutes later there was a frantic ringing of our front door bell. We were greeted by the old lady in the downstairs maisonette. She was hysterical, but eventually got through to us that water was coming down her walls. We investigated and also found water was pouring through the light fighting in her bedroom. To cut a long story short, a leak was traced to a faulty soldered pipe connection and the system was quickly drained.

About 6pm the system was back working. The place looked as though a bomb had hit it but at least we felt we could relax. We had a nice hot bath and went to bed shortly after 10pm. We had hardly settled down when the doorbell rang. The extremely upset woman from downstairs demanded that I look at what was happening to one of her bedroom walls. I found a huge damp patch on her favourite wallpaper. I raced back upstairs and frantically tore up floorboards to find that a nut connecting the pipes to a radiator was loose. I fixed this and thought I had better check the rest of the system. In the loungeroom, I found water running from both ends of the radiator there. As I began tearing up more floorboards, the doorbell rang again. It was the old woman again the report that water was now running down another bedroom wall. So up came more floorboards. This time I found another faulty soldered joint.

Fortunately, I was able to phone Southern Cross Heating. The woman who answered the call dragged the boss out of the pub and he gave me instructions on how to switch off the system and drain it. By this time, of course, damage had been done to the downstairs maisonette — and to our relations with the woman and daughter who lived there.

Later in the day…

Rosemary has just come in with a big hunk of floorboard she found under our bed. She also found a matching hole in the floor beneath a wardrobe. This looks like a job for the Houseowners’ Association. Our £1 membership fee is proving a good deal in view of the fact that they are already involved in fighting our solicitor over his botched handling of the purchase of the maisonette. The Law Society wrote to me last week saying there was not enough evidence to take action against the solicitor on ethical grounds but they were still looking at the question of overcharging.

Extract from a letter dated March 25, 1972:

FLOODING

The Saga of the Central Heating continues. The day after I last wrote another leak developed. The engineer couldn’t stop it, so as a temporary measure he tried to place one of Rosemary’s almost-new saucepans under the offending fracture. It wouldn’t fit so he bent it into shape until it did. You can imagine what Rosemary said when she found out.

I summoned the Southern Heating boss around the next day and took him on a guided tour of all the faults and the damage done. He also found a few other things that were wrong. The net result was that the engineer was sacked. Most of the damage was put right and (after a haggle) he said he would not object to a reasonable reduction in the installation cost.

All seemed well until this Wednesday when the system stopped working. This was eventually fixed but now we are being wakened at night by creaking noises made by the expansion of the pipes when the thermostat switches the system on. Very irritating.

Extract from a letter of April 14, 1972:

The Great Central Heating Disaster continues. So far this week we have had four visits from various central heating engineers. So far none has been able to iron out the faults. We usually don’t go more than a couple of days without having to call in someone to get the system going again. We wish we’d never heard of central heating. I suppose we can at least be grateful that there have been no more leaks.

Extract from a letter of May 6, 1972:

MORE LEAKS

We are thinking of issuing ourselves with gum boots because of our damned central heating. Last week water leaked from the radiator in the main bedroom and ran down a wall in the downstairs maisonette. Then this week a pipe came off a radiator while it was being moved during painting. This resulted in the system emptying itself (about 40 gallons) all over the front entrance.

Rosemary jokingly suggested to Southern Cross Heating that they might pull out the system and start again. Her remark was received in cold silence, but a couple of days later the boss of the firm came and did just as she suggested. He had discovered that the pump which circulates the hot water through the radiators was connected to the wrong pipes. All that remains to be rectified now is the odd fault or two! Like the fact that the boiler tank appears about to come adrift from the wall. Like the loud “pinging” noises when some of the radiators expand or retract. Like the distressing tendency of the system to spring a leak at the slightest provocation. Undaunted we battle on — a battle we fear will outlast the Vietnam War.

From a letter dated May 24, 1972:

PAYMENT DISPUTE

The central heating people have sent us the bill for the rest of the money owing on the system, making the laughable claim that “the installation is now complete”. They’ve been told politely (extremely so in the circumstances) to go jump in the lake. An independent organisation — set up to deal with this sort of situation — will be sending a man around next week to go over the system from top to bottom. His comments (which can be submitted as evidence in court, if necessary) will be quite interesting.

From a letter dated June 11, 1972:

SYSTEM CONDEMNED

The Central Heating Saga (episode 251): The inspection by the independent surveyor proved worse — much worse — than we had even imagined. In short, the system was condemned. It will have to be torn out and rebuilt. One of the first things the surveyor discovered was that the exhaust flu was too close to an open window. This made it not just an unsafe installation but an illegal one.

An inspection of the loft discovered two hair-raising things. The worse, by far, was the discovery that the overflow vent for the hot water tank had been deliberately sealed — presumably to stop air that was being wrongly sucked into the system. The surveyor said it was the most incredible thing he’s ever seen in a central heating system because if the hot water tank had ever boiled the whole system would have exploded. He also found that the overflow pipe for the cold water tank had not been connected and was just lying beside the tank. He asked me to take photographs for evidence before he hack-sawed the end off the sealed pipe and fixed the cold overflow pipe into position. The number of other things he found would fill this letter. The surveyor could not understand how the system had been approved by the gas board and he had been kicking up merry hell with them. An inspector from the gas board has been to look at the system and agreed that it should not have been passed.

It looks as though the person who passed the system was working in league with the fellow who conned us into using the Australian firm. Fortunately we still owe the firm £250, which we will use instead to get the system put right by a more competent company. There is now a fairly strong case for police action on at least two possible offences: corruption and fraud. This is something the surveyor is looking into.

From a letter dated July 17, 1972:

SOLUTION AHEAD

There appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel regarding our central heating. Southern Cross Heating has agreed to re-install the system under the direct supervision of the National Heating Consultancy, the consumer body that supervises central heating installations. The firm has agreed to reimburse us for all our costs and abide by any rulings by the consultancy regarding the standard of the work.

From a letter dated September 23, 1972:

We seem to be making some progress with the central heating. The rectified instillation is working quite well, although there are still noises in the main bedroom radiator. We are hoping the source of this will be traced in the coming week.

From a letter dated October 21, 1972:

TERRIBLE WEEK

It's been a ghastly week. We’ve had the builders in for six days replacing all our pipework and installing the new bathroom suite. In the process, they managed to flood the kitchen twice, nearly reducing Rosemary to a nervous breakdown. It’s been a massive job, and the noise and dirt has been terrible.

As well as the builders, we’ve also had an electrician and two carpet layers scrambling over each other at various times. Relations with the old witch downstairs have fallen to an all-time low, even though much of the work we’ve had done will benefit her as much as us. The only person who has enjoyed it at all has been Harley who’s had a lovely time chatting to be workmen and playing with their tools. We’re going to have peace (relatively so) for about a month, then the builders return to do the kitchen. Fortunately this shouldn't take too long. Although all this is just about driving us around the bend, things are at last beginning to take shape, and another couple of months should see everything shipshape.

The central heating is working reasonably well at the moment but still has a few bugs to sort out. The independent surveyor is going to check the system over next Wednesday, but he doubts that he will pass it. To think that in a moment of idiotic optimism, I once forecast that all the work would be done well inside six months. We have now had the place a year and a week.

I've just had a telephone call from our downstairs neighbour to report that even though her hot water service tank is boiling hot, only cold water comes from the taps. From her explanation it seems the plumber has connected up the wrong pipes. If this keeps up, I’ll be slashing my wrists before the day is out!

CONCLUSION

More than a year after we moved into the maisonette the central heating was fully operational and all the building work completed to our satisfaction. I didn’t note what happened to Southern Cross Heating, but I assume they went out of business. Complaints were made to the Gas Board about the corrupt officials who recommended Southern Cross and who initially approved their work. The board claimed they couldn’t be traced — a likely story!

The letter of October 21 doesn’t mention our nightmare dealings with Paddy the Plumber. He was responsible for flooding the kitchen, and among other matters, he had to re-install the bath because the first time he fitted it the wrong way round. This made it impossible to use the shower.

I have no record of who paid for the damage done to the maisonette downstairs. I hope the elderly Hungarian woman had an excellent insurance policy.

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The next chapter includes my coverage of an airliner crash. Other chapters can be found HERE