Another day, another plumber

May/June 2013

...and another plumber withdraws citing personal reasons. (Roy's wife is standing by him. J.) He says he needs a career change and will be handing in his plumbing licence shortly. What is it about our small barn...? He was such a nice guy on site but after a month I wonder if he'd forgotten the beauty of our project!

(I also wonder if my asking for his ten-year guarantee certificate - pretty much mandatory in France if you want to make a living as a Tradesman - has something to do with his loss of excitement...)

After scrabbling on the internet we find a new English plumber (aka the Yorkshire terrier, Plumber 3) who lives nearby and seems to have serious street-cred. Why haven't we found him before? Why has he no kindly recommendations from the other English locals?

The weather is apparently improving, so landscaping can begin in a couple of weeks, once the ground dries up a bit. Pressure is starting to mount to get our plumber lined up to start.

But then follows huge discussion with the terrier around the heating and the type of boiler - wood pellet stove our favoured option because it'll be cheap to run and easy to refuel. But our terrier says anything that burns wood, of any type, needs a large buffer tank if it's going to be used to heat water. And we want to heat lots of water for our three heating circuits - underfloor heating, upstairs radiators and hot tap-water. Did we say before that we want the barn to be warm?

To-ing and fro-ing of opinion, much research on domestic heating. Much yawning and shuffling of feet by J.

I hear of a chap nearby who's recently installed a pellet-stove using a local contractor. I call the happy owner of the warm house who confirms that the system is indeed pretty solid and simple, has absolutely no need of any thermal 'buffer' tank (why would you need one?) and he recommends his local plumber highly. Who, by the way, speaks not a word of English. I hold my breath and start conjugating my vowels. Speaking French on the phone has never been my strong point. But Tom and Brian have also heard of this guy and they say he does a good job, so this seems a strong starting point. Tom rolls his eyes a little at me when I say I'm lame when it comes to speaking French on the phone. 'Get over yourself', I can almost hear our compatriots say. And they'd be right...