Nice People 13: Nice Save

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

As a rule I am only interested in heating the living room. So I'll need to keep adjusting all the other rads until each one's at a really low setting, just above the frost setting, maybe setting them to 1.

It does take a long time though as you have to change the setting and you can't really check/see until the next day, when it's started from nothing and had time to get up to its temperature all on its own again.... then you can tell if it's too hot/too cold, or if the radiator's coming on at all.

Rads I've got are: kitchen, downstairs loo, hall, living room, bed1, bed2, bathroom.

Yes, I'd set all the rads down to 1, except the living room. Set the thermostat in the hall for say 18C. Set the radiator water temperature on the boiler to the middle of the range. Then, see how it all pans out.

Bear in mind that there are millions of these systems, some of them operated by people with IQs several SDs below the mean. Nobody gets blown up, because the systems have fail-safes built in. So, you can safely play with the controls a bit, within reason, to see what happens.

There's no point, for example, having the thermostat set to 30C and the individual rad stats set at 18C. But the other way round works reasonably effectively.

If you don't want the kitchen very warm, you'll need to buy a thermostatic head for the rad valve as a matter of priority. Or switch over the one from the living room.

PasturesNew

lostinrates wrote: »

Actually, that sounds wonderful. Come and live here, sort out the timer on ours. I just push the button every day

Today I'm just letting it be on. Although I can feel its not cold I feel cool and have a 'what the hell' or maybe ' who cares?' Sort of feeling about it.

That doesn't work if you're not there though.

Pressing the button's fine, until you're going away for some days (e.g. Xmas) when it's winter and you need it to come on/go off etc even if it's just for 2 hours around the 4am "coldest part of the night" - although modern systems do kick in don't they, I believe, if they're set low.

PasturesNew

GDB2222 wrote: »

There's no point, for example, having the thermostat set to 30C and the individual rad stats set at 18C. But the other way round works reasonably effectively.

If you don't want the kitchen very warm, you'll need to buy a thermostatic head for the rad valve as a matter of priority. Or switch over the one from the living room.

This is the bit that I need to get my head round to understand.

Oh, switch over? Good thinking... although that introduces the ability to farq up a 2nd one that was working fine until I touched it

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

That doesn't work if you're not there though.

Pressing the button's fine, until you're going away for some days (e.g. Xmas) when it's winter and you need it to come on/go off etc even if it's just for 2 hours around the 4am "coldest part of the night" - although modern systems do kick in don't they, I believe, if they're set low.

For us it will always work. More's the pity.

PasturesNew

Been looking at where I've to pick up these ebay items from. One's a tricky place to find as it's in the middle of a dense area of housing. I don't know the area at all, I know it's "not the best of areas" and it'll be dark and it's nigh on impossible to drive slowly/stop at the roadside when you're in a stream of traffic that know where they're going.

I looked on streetview and can spot the specific/individual house, which will be easy to find once I'm in their road, but it'll be a pain in the butt [a] finding their road finding my way out again so I can head back home here.

Typically, one lot's X miles in one direction, then I have to drive back and past mine before driving X miles in the other direction. Total round robin is about 30 miles if I don't end up making the wrong choices at roundabouts.

I hate the way you know where you're heading for and suddenly a roundabout presents you with other choices and doesn't mention the name of the place you were heading for

SingleSue

tom9980 wrote: »

We all know you do a great job, even when things were tough you kept trying, my point is too many parents don't care, the boy I speak of has parents who don't care.

My wife has a cousin whose school is graded outstanding she recognised he was autistic but the school refused to get him tested and a statement instead saying he was a troublemaker and regularly suspending him. He is now home schooled and was indeed found to be autistic and is flourishing, the system is not fair and deeply flawed to allow him to slip through the net like that.

It is interesting you mention that josh has a key, my mum used to work in a special school with some very disabled and troubled children, they all often have a key that engages them. She found some very unconventional methods to teach some of them to read and write when so called experts decided they had no chance of doing so. The boy at my wife's school has a key too.

James is clearly getting good experience but do understand he is only experiencing the best parts right now which is why he may benefit from more direct experience in school so he can see the worst parts of the job. Teaching lessons is amazing it's all the other parts of the job that make it difficult for newly qualified teachers, a bit of exposure to that will help him decide if he can cope.

Getting Josh statemented was an absolute nightmare, the school wouldn't support the statement, they refused to accept his diagnosis (they didn't do the referral for diagnosis, his paediatrician did) and also labelled him a trouble maker, unteachable etc. Even despite having a formal diagnosis, the school refused to allow the specialist outreach service to work with him....the outreach service had finally convinced them and were actually on the way to the school the day he got perm excluded.

Youngest's school however were completely different (this was after I moved him from the same school as Josh after they ignored the pre school advisory teacher's 2 page list of things they needed to do and in doing so, his only just started language was back to screaming again), they completely supported the statementing process and any advice that was offered to them from other services and he had the support of the specialist outreach service from the word go there.

It is actually quite amazing the difference between schools and their attitudes, I was lucky with youngest with his new infant and junior school, the junior school especially going out of their way to accomodate him and make changes, which in the end, benefited other differing needs children, not just autistic ones and they became a school of excellence for special needs children. When youngest finally moved on, they said the changes made at the school was his legacy to other children with differing needs.

Youngest's 'key' is technology, specifically Apple products and gaming, although his key doesn't always work...apart from to lock the gates to him completely from time to time.

James has an offer of work experience from the high school he attended, so hopefully, he can then get an idea of what he has let himself in for! Personally, I think he is mad to want to do it....whilst also very proud that he wants to do it.

SingleSue

PasturesNew wrote: »

The idea's nice - the practice is that they're all so different. You can't beat the simplicity of one manual big switch ON/OFF. You know where you are with that.

If they all worked the same, with the same dials/buttons/switches/options then it'd be easier to fathom things out, but every one's so darned different.

You'd be jealous of mine, one big on/off switch and one slider switch for the central heating.

PasturesNew

SingleSue wrote: »

You'd be jealous of mine, one big on/off switch and one slider switch for the central heating.

That's how it should be!

I've never had/used a wall thermostat before... seems a bit superfluous if one's setting the temperature at the boiler and on the rads. Maybe I'll see the point of it once I've thought it through a bit more. Thinking it through it's the thing that makes it come on at a certain (low) temperature, rather than set/fixed timer hours or manually pressing things. I can see that a thermostat driven system could lead to laziness and over-use as it'd be choosing when the heating's on, rather than being a conscious decision.

I think I've been spoilt now - had the heating on for half an hour and felt the warmth.... now it's getting nippy and my brain said "You need that heating malarky on again"..... I've gone all southern softy in just 30 minutes!!

Can't have that. I only had that heating on, for the first time ever, to check/test if it worked and if I could work it out. Heating's a luxury, to be saved for only the coldest of days, for a max of 2 hours/day in the depths of winter. I didn't turn it on to wallow and luxuriate.

lostinrates

Odd weather here, we get these surprising rain falls here.....this time raining in north garden, ( new terrace) but not in south garden ( back garden) sitting between windows looking out each way and its so weird.

tom9980

SingleSue wrote: »

James has an offer of work experience from the high school he attended, so hopefully, he can then get an idea of what he has let himself in for! Personally, I think he is mad to want to do it....whilst also very proud that he wants to do it.

He probably is capable of doing it one of the Teachers is on the spectrum and he is well regarded, so that aspect shouldn't be a worry. My concern would be does he understand what will be expected and required? Hopefully he asks some good questions during his work experience and is given truthful answers so that he can make up his own mind.