Living in a small country you’re reminded frequently that there just isn’t enough competition here. Mobile phone companies are the first example that springs to mind but our most recent experience was with heating suppliers. We want to have ducted gas heating (central heating) installed in our house before winter because it will be colder than the inside of our fridge in July. After hours of searching online for companies that could do this for us we found four who actually returned our phone calls and emails.
Company number one…excellent sales man although he lost points when he turned to me at the end of the meeting to hand me the designer grill covers. Clearly this part was the woman’s job. Fail.
Company number two…A clown in salesman clothing and not the funny kind. I think the word Seb uses is boeuf.
Company number three…Pointed out that we should insulate under the house before they put the ducting in or it will be a painful mission afterwards to do it. He’s the only one who pointed this out and his price was better than the clown and the chauvinist.
Company number four…Same product as company number three but more expensive because he’s contracting a lot of the work out.
That’s it. Four companies, one clear winner. So we signed the paperwork and we should have our heating installed in the beginning of June before refrigerator weather kicks in. Yay. Now to insulate.
Holy hell what a nightmare. I find it hard to believe that it could have been worse but yeah, I guess if there was duct work under there it would have been unbearable. For two days three of us, me, Seb and David, army-crawled and shimmied our way under the house to install the polystyrene insulation.
Let me be the first to say that the guy on the instructional video is lying to you when he says it’s easy. It might be easy to install in a house where you can stand under it and where the joists are the same width apart. Our house is 100 years old. The joists are covered in dirt and splinters and spider webs that could double as a wool blanket. The construction of this house certainly didn’t follow any code as the joists seemed to be put in all willy nilly at varying widths. And the worst was the fact that we were in dirt all day on our back trying to get the damn polystyrene to fit…which in many cases it wouldn’t so it had to be scraped back until it would.
And then there was the dead cat. In the shallowest part of the house with his face nearly up against the joists Seb discovered the dead petrified mummified cat when he came nose to nose with it. Clearly a memorable moment. I only wish I’d taken some pictures under the house while we were working so you could appreciate the horribleness of it all but we were all in such foul moods and were desperate to finish the work. The good news is that it’s done!
