it's been a rough 30 hours

Sometime yesterday afternoon, (that's Sunday which is prime time for disasters), the pilot light on my gas hot water heater blew out. 
No hot water.

Oh Joy! (*~*)

Being on the same back wall, so did everyone else's heater blow out, so none of our four flats had hot water.
I rang the emergency maintenance people and was told someone would be out to fix it today. 
Well, that didn't happen, the poor guys must be terribly busy elsewhere, so we're all without hot water still.
I boiled the kettle so I could wash myself and then again to wash the dishes.
Sat around all day doing stuff and waiting for the maintenance person, because if you miss them, you have to phone and reschedule.

Then I remembered that I have to take Angel to the vet tomorrow for his booster vaccination against various things that cats can get: Panleucopenia, whatever that is; rhinotracheitis; calicivirus; chlamydia.
I'd rather pay for the vaccination than see him get sick and then have to pay a fortune to save him. 

So I consulted my neighbour P, discovered she had also rang for maintenance, as had the young couple upstairs from her. Excellent news, they can all watch out for maintenance person while I take Angel to the vet.

I got busy doing something important, you'll see it here tomorrow (*o*) and had just finished eating dinner; yummy vegetable soup; when the power went out.

Aaaargh!!

Angel got spooked of course and ran around in a panic not knowing where to be, while I checked on neighbours and handed out torches and candles where needed, and lit candles all over my place. I even unearthed my old tealights and had just set them glowing on the table when the power came back on.
P had just phoned her carer too, to ask about her insulin, would it be ok in the fridge without power.

 We weren't expecting power back on until about 2am!  

"No-one" had checked on her computer, clear across the other side of town and that's what she'd read. 

Well, I'm all resettled with the laptop and the book and even took the emergency batteries back out of the radio, but Angel is still running around like a headless chook, in between naps. He'll settle down.

We're all about excitement here in Adelaide.

Comments

  1. I bet the old hot water beast never had a pilot to blow out. Through storm and tempest, it just kept on heating your water. Has the weather been extreme?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The old hot water beats did have a pilot; there was a gas heater attached to the exterior to keep it pumping or some damn thing, I don't really remember.And it didn't just keep on heating, it broke down several times the first year I was here.
    Weather has been wild and woolly, but I wouldn't call it extreme. We always get these huge gusty winds that knock over trees and blow roofs off houses at this time of year. and again in spring. But this is the first time the pilots have been blown out.

    ReplyDelete
  3. uh! That's "beast" not 'beats' :(

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well none of that sounds fun at all. It's not often that we lose power here but when something goes missing it makes you want it more. Hopefully, you have both, some hot water and electricity, back working again.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've had to start up those pilot lights several times. It's not that hard, only takes me about 45 minutes and lots of cursing. There is a knack that makes it easy, it just takes 45 minutes to learn and 5 minutes to forget.

    ReplyDelete
  6. It sounds like one thing, if not another. Lights after hot water is unconscionable.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Excitement indeed....and on a Sunday!

    ReplyDelete
  8. We've had some problems here with our disposer & our water heater--do you suppose a plague is spreading?

    ReplyDelete
  9. I have learned (the hard way) how to restart the pilot light to our water heater.
    We had wind too. Five foot from the top of a tree dahlia came crashing down. Hopefully that is the worst of it.
    Good luck with Angel's vet trip. Not fun. For him or you.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Well, from the reports I've seen on the news this morning....Adelaide and surrounding areas has a pretty rough yesterday as well. The weather forecasts were spot on with their predictions it would seem.

    I hope everything is back to normal for you by now, River...or if not, it soon will be. I hope you and Angel were safe from the strong wines and flooding. Take care.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Cheryl; it's fun in the short term, I had little candles everywhere and the place looked quite pretty.

    joeh; my daughter across town has one of those easily lit pilot lights, we all know how to relight that one. I grew up with gas appliances, my dad was a plumber/gas fitter.

    Joanne; until the power went out, I could get hot water by boiling the kettle, so that wasn't too bad. After the power went, all I could think about was not being able to have a hot coffee. Silly what you miss, isn't it?

    Linda Kay; I hope we don't get this level of excitement every Sunday!

    fishducky; a plague! quick! sacrifice a virgin or something! Appease the plague gods..

    Elephant's Child; turns out this heater style doesn't have a pilot light. It has electronic ignition. Angel doesn't mind going to the vet, he's very well behaved while he's there. it's being put into the carrier he hates. Even the vet had trouble getting him back in for the trip home.

    Lee; rough here alright. Roofs came off, trees came down, some areas are still without power. That's winter for you. Normal? Let me start a new post...

    ReplyDelete
  12. We've had our hot water problems as well but nothing as bad as yours really and we seldom have power outages which is fortunate. I've never thought in the past when it did happen about our insulin in the fridge. Must keep that in mind.
    Strangely enough although we had heavy rain during the week there wasn't much wind but two huge branches of a corner tree in our front garden came down and one of my pony tails was broken off at ground level. :(

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

kitchen tip #?????

being unaccustomed to public speaking,

I've been trying to contact Haagen-Dazs