Warm and cosy

One of our classmates was asking about the central heating system in our house. She lives in an apartment in nearby Jacarilla with air conditioning in the bedroom and a log fire in the living/dining room. Yesterday she told us that it was warmer in the street than it was in her house and asked us what it was like for us with central heating. We told her that we’d left the heating on and so would be going back to a lovely warm house.

In fact, very few houses in Bigastro have central heating because very few have a connection to a gas supply. I suppose it is possible that some of the larger houses may have oil fired central heating – I really can’t say.

When Star Sol built our estate, they installed large gas tanks to hold propane (as far as I know, there is no natural gas pipeline to the town). We therefore had the option to have central heating installed with radiators in each of the rooms. Those buyers who chose not to have heating installed, still had the pipe work plumbed in case they changed their minds at a later date (many have).

Originally, our boiler was fuelled by two gas bottles outside the kitchen. Sods law, one or other of the bottles would run out at the weekend when we couldn’t get a replacement. After we were connected to the large tanks the supply was fine and apart from when the engineers turned it off to pressure test the pipe work, it has been consistent.

Every four or five years, the system in our house has to be tested for leaks – that is the law! And every year, the boiler has to be serviced – again that is the law.

Originally, our boiler lost pressure and needed to be topped up with water on a fortnightly basis. Now though it works fine and I am pleased to say that the service reports show that it is working perfectly.

One small gripe; in England we used to have a programmer that turned the system on an off at preset times. What we have here is a thermostat to turn the boiler on and off.

I know we could have a programmer installed but to be honest, we have got used to using the thermostat to control the boiler and it is no longer an issue for us.