warmer than you'd think

For the last week at work it's actually been warm.

The reason is that a heating engineer came and took a look at the boiler, serviced it and put new valves on all the radiators.

It's always been a bit of problem at the office where I work.  I've always felt that the building had some issues - it's poorly insulated, there are a lot of windows, the upstairs where we all work is a big, single open-plan office and the downstairs is basically unoccupied.  However, I also felt that the current boiler wasn't man enough for the job.

A few years ago the old boiler packed up and was replaced and since then it's never been as warm during the winter as I recall it being with the old boiler.  In particular I've taken to wearing an extraordinary number of layers of clothes at work - a vest, two t-shirts, work shirt, jumper and often my work jacket too.

Now part of the issue is that the last few years it seems to have been quite a bit colder than it was when I first started work there so it seemed only natural that it wouldn't be as warm.

However, the building has been veritably balmy during this last week.  This suggests that the newer boiler was up to the job but that the system perhaps hadn't been optimised.  I know the boss often had to "top it up" and was forever going on about the "pressure in the system".  I believe they flushed the system and refilled it, so perhaps there was some bigger issue?

The other thing was the valves - the old values always used to stick and although they had temperature gauges on them they always seemed to act more like on/off switches, rather than gradual valves.  Well the new valves work like proper valves - if you turn them down half way the radiator is only warm, rather than hot.

To me this suggests the old valves were either gunged up in some way or were not the correct type of valve and were restricting the flow of water around the system.  I've actually already turned the radiators near me down as I don't tend to like it as hot as it's been.  And the result is that on Friday I only wore a vest and my work shirt, and the vest was because it was cold outside and I ended up rolling my sleeves up when indoors.

It'll have a bit more of a test next week though as it's meant to get a bit chillier.