Here in the Spaceship we have been in the middle of a dramatic change of climate. Specifically, we have been ripping out the old air based central heating system, and replacing it with a normal one. The idea, in 1963, when the house was built, was that an oil fired boiler heated the water for the house, and that this was circulated in a couple of huge heat exchangers that then blew the hot air this created around the house in ducts that ran into every room. The reaction of most of the engineers that have been called on to keep this Heath Robinson system running has invariably been "Fecking Hull," on first sighting it, and then "Who the hell put this system in a private house?" That's always encouraging.
In 1963 this might have been a good idea. With oil hovering perilously close to 100 dollars a barrel, and even the UN chairman talking about global catastrophe it might not be still.
So, we bit the bullet, and now have de-commissioned the old heating, via the services of a demolition firm called, rather wittily, "Deconstruction Intelligent", a french language pun on demolition, but also deconstruction as a philosophical issue. Only in a french language environment, although one example of this in English was the urban legend of the Patel Brothers building firm, whose motto was, "you've tried the cowboys, now try the Indians."
This resulted in the removal of the "Saturn V" from the basement. It was called this because it powered the Spaceship, and drank about as much oil as a fully fledged moon-landing attempt, but only minimally heated the house.
Good stuff, steady progress on a broad range of fronts! Only one problem, being that we have no heating once this is done, and it is November, in Switzerland. Our only sources of heat are loads of electric heaters that we own and that have been lent to us by neighbours, and a very modern wood burning stove in the living room. using the electric heaters can overload the main fuse-board, such that we are replacing about four or five fuses a week, and the stove does give of a lot of heat, but it also gets through about a cubic metre or more of wood every couple of weeks.
So, I now have a really bad head cold, but I can survive.
The installation of the new heating is going well, with the radiators all being in place, and we will will have an oil burning system that was designed to be energy efficient, and that will also use solar power to top up the heating. The work to put this in place has been absolutely amazing. Getting the old beast in the basement out was bad enough, as all that had to be done was saw up the huge chunks, and somehow remove them, but the precision required to get a new system in and running, and the various firms that have to be involved and the sequence of events that have to be co-ordinated is impressive.
Not only that, but next week we will turn off the hot water, and replace the oil tank for the house. It has the potential to go horribly wrong, but we remain steadfast in the face of the potential for smelly feet, and oil spills.
When the system is finished we will all be delighted, but none more so that Wim., the Most Intelligent Member of the crew, who has taken to sleeping with his paw over his nose in an attempt to keep warm. Poor creature, I know how he feels.
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