Freezing house, plumber booked but has gone AWOL

[SpursFan2]

Just posting for some advice please.

I’m a lodger, and there’s an issue with my heating in the house I’m in (it’s apparently timed to switch on each night at 18:30, but it hasn’t during the last few nights and it’s absolutely freezing, even with the fire on).

Unfortunately my landlord is away so can’t help directly. There are thermostats in the house that show lovely comfortable temps (e.g. 23, 21) in the evening but all the radiators are stone cold, even though they are all turned to full blast.

We had a similar heating issue a couple of weeks ago and the plumber came to sort it, and it seemed sorted for a a few days - until a couple of days ago.

This morning my landlord gave me the number of the plumbers he uses and the plumber arranged to come at 4:30 today to look at the heating.

4:30 came and went - I rang up the plumbers at 4:45 and they said the plumber actually has a 3-hour window to complete the job (so he could turn up any time today between 4:30 and 7:30).

I’ve just rung up the plumber company and - surprise surprise - they’re now closed for the evening and there’s no out of office number to call them. I’ve let my landlord know about all of this, and am waiting for his reply. I’ve got something on this evening as well, which means I won’t be in to let the plumber in if he does turn up at the end of his time slot at 6:30-7:30 (although doubt he’s coming tbh).

The house is just so cold (it’s big and draughty, which doesn’t help) and I’m so frustrated. Any advice/hand holding appreciated please. Thanks!

To be honest the plumber may well still appear. They are very busy at the moment and mine is working evenings.

Could you try bleeding the radiators??

I could try - that’s a good point thanks @OldTinHat . They were bled when the plumber last came about a week ago, so it seems strange that they’re now not working.

My last plumber also said that you can help force temperature through a radiator by turning every other radiator off and leaving that one on and whacking the temperature up to max. I think it was something to do with air bubbles but I can't remember. Worth a shot. He'll probably still turn up. Plumbers work on their own timeline.

If your thermostat is showing a decent temperature the radiators will shut off and cool down , they don't blast out heat permanently or you'd roast . That's what the thermostat is there for ( switching the boiler on / off when required .
However , it could be that you have a thermostat problem.

Thanks so much all! The plumber turned up in the end and he was great. Basically the long and short of it is the landlord has the heating on a timer and it takes time for the whole house to warm up when the timer kicks in (generally is meant to come on in the evening). This is the understandable bit.

The other bit which is more frustrating is the landlord has an app to control the heating, and apparently the app ‘knows’ when he is or isn’t in the house and sometimes doesn’t come on when he isn’t home (he told me this a couple of weeks ago). He’s away at the moment and I bet he hasn’t actually turned the heating on properly whilst he’s away. He’s generally a good landlord apart from the heating issue.

The plumber will write a report and send it to the landlord (standard process) and I hope this spurs the landlord into action - not sure it will though.

There is usually a manual turn on and off switch somewhere and try turning the thermostat up really high.

If that plumber doesn't come, look at the boiler and Google local plumbers affiliated with that brand. Call them up one by one until one answers, then see if they can help you over the phone to do something to the boiler. This happened to me before and he guided me through some steps and I fixed it, and obviously no charge. At least you can get advice from them and you could invite one if they have to come and fix it, and tell landlord you had to as other one didn't show. Then get LL to pay invoice.