Latest on the Central Heating

I hope those of you who read my blog regularly will know that I hate those whinging ex-pat blogs that are too frequent. They make you want to ask, "If you dislike the country and its people so much why did you move here?" I also dislike those ex-pat blogs, which seem to think it necessary to justify their move by attacking their motherland. So it is with caution and regret that I have decided to blog about the painful experience I have had with dealing with Czech contractors, but I think it is only fair on anyone else who is starting out on the path of restoring a house here.

Following on my post on the central heating a month or so ago, my electrician eventually turned up. He managed to botch together a solution to the hot water problem (he needed to bring a new switch so for a while the existing switch had to be held together with a piece of paper). In so doing he broke the seal that electricity supplier had put on the electric meter setting. Of course he says all the problems are electricity supplier's fault, but because he broke the seal we can't prove it! As for the central heating, well he couldn't help me there, I had to get the central heating company in. As the electrician had been the project manager for all the first stage of work – including the central heating – this should have surprised me, but after three years here it didn't.

The date arranged for the visit of the central heating engineer came and went, another no-show. Then on the Wednesday, miracle of miracles, both the heating engineer and electrician turned up together. It turns out that the central heating is to the wrong spec and could never heat the house in these conditions. Add to that the clock in the electric box is faulty, with the result that such heating as there is isn't charging properly. It has taken three years of complaining about the heating and sky-high bills to get this far, but at least (I hope) the problems have been identified and we might just have agreed the steps towards getting them fixed, perhaps not completely but enough.

So what have I learnt (the hard way) about employing Czech builders?
1 Well for starters they will tell you what they think you want to hear (see my post on When Yes Means No) rather than the truth.
2 If you don't ask for something, the Czech craftsmen won't do it for you and they won't suggest it either. No matter that they are the experts, you are still meant to know. No matter too that it is a task so obvious one would think it unnecessary to ask, it won't to get done – eg if you ask them to fit a sink, ensure they also fit a waste pipe!
3 Czech tradesmen never seem to finish anything properly, and certainly don't do the necessary checks when they finish (see my August post about the dryrot in the kitchen).
4 Get everything in writing.
5 Even when you employ someone as a project manager – don't assume they will take responsibility if things go wrong.
6 Ensure that the builders include the cost of cleaning up after the job otherwise you will be left with piles of rubble.
7 Get a Brit to do it (only joking, well maybe not).

Have I just been unlucky and am making unfair generalisations? Conversations with other ex-pats and indeed with Czechs confirm that I am not alone in my experience. Is it just another example of the Czech attitude to work that I spoke about it in a previous post? Probably and if so there's no hope for us. Not that I am for one moment suggesting that one does not have bad experiences in England, just that they seem almost the norm here. Ah well, I just have to remind myself how much I love the house and the countryside around it.

No Hot Water

My water heater isn't working and nor (properly) is my central heating. With the winter temperatures consistently well below zero, this is a disaster. The radiators are just about lukewarm, which at least means that the chill is taken off all the rooms and the water in the pipes does not freeze, but it is far from satisfactory. Fortunately we do have our wonderful wood-burning stove (see previous post), with which we are able to heat our main living room.

When we bought the house we took a load of professional advice on the best heating system for it – given there would be times when we would not be there and when we would want to temper the house to just above freezing. This seemed to preclude the exclusive use of the woodburning stoves, as these require topping up. The heating system we got was meant to be the best – with four large tanks installed in the back basement room in which water, that had been heated at times when the electricity rate was lowest, could be stored before being pumped to the radiators. The control system was again meant to be brilliant, with thermostatic controls, a digital timer with a multitude of programmes to choose from, and even the facility to be controlled remotely by phone – the idea being we can ring from England and it would come on in advance of our arrival. The remote control option didn't work from the beginning – the receiver was set in a wall with poor telephone reception. Within a year of use the digital timer had broken and had to be replaced, and now the bit that tells the boiler to come on and by how much seems not to be working. Added to that bills far in excess of what we had been led to expect – we are now told that a switch has been installed wrongly and so not only have been heating the water when the electric is at its most expensive but the surges in the current are what have been breaking the equipment – and you can see why I am close to suggesting we get rid of the lot.

Then when we got back from England just before the New Year the water heater failed to heat. Aaarghh!!! Of course all the Czechs were taking extended Christmas and New Year holidays and so it was not until the 12th that I was able to arrange for the electrician to turn up. I waited for him in vain, he had decided to go down the pub instead. I hate to say it, but I have come to recognise this as being par for the course here in the Czech Republic. The only consolation was I was so angry I managed to chop all the logs in the barn. Previously I had struggled in vain to split them, now imagining them to be someone's head I did the lot!