My house is going to blow up!

Shortly after Easter it finally happened - we were able to turn on the kitchen tap and water came out! We actually have a really swish tap with a shower head on a flexible hose so it's really easy to clean the sink and there's a sort of colander thing which fits into the sink so you can just put vegetables into it and spray them with the shower. In fact I just love washing vegetables! (Sometimes I wonder just where my life is going.)

Then even something better happened. They came and connected up the solar heating and we had hot water coming through the kitchen tap! Well we did for 2 days until it went wrong. The water just stopped heating even though it was nice and sunny outside. I phoned them up and they said they'd send an engineer but they didn't, they just sent a customer satisfaction survey which isn't quite the same somehow.

Then one hot day the tank started making really loud hissing noises and there was what seemed to be smoke coming out of the control panel. At this point I really thought the house was about to blow up. You know that ice-breaker thing they sometimes do in discussion groups : 'if your house was on fire and you could only take 1 thing what would it be?' They're trying to assess your character by seeing if you'd take your BlackBerry and leave the hamster to burn? Well suddenly it was really happening to me and I tried to decide what was my most precious possession and decided it was the framed photo of J at 6 months in his Peter Rabbit top and little blue tartan trousers. The problem was it was in the loft and I wasn't sure I could make it up there and is the loft the best place to be when your house is about to explode? 

I stood in the French doors dithering and then I thought of phoning up the company.

The man said 'It's not smoke. It's venting steam and ethylene glycol. It's what it's meant to do when it overheats.' and I said 'Through the control panel?' and he said 'Yeah.' 

Then a few days later the engineer came and I said 'It's venting steam and ethylene glycol through the control panel' and he said 'Through the control panel?' and I said 'Yeah.' 

Then he said 'You see that valve, I got a text this morning saying 'whatever you do don't fit any more of those valves'. 

So anyway it works now but 'm still a bit suspicious of it really.

We still don't have a bathroom, well not one that works anyway and we have to go back to the caravan to go to the loo which is a bit of a disadvantage really, especially in the middle of the night when it's raining. 

I really, really would like to have a bathroom.