Consuming Interest
Putting the Heat On
By LESLIE
ADRIAN
WIMBLEDON fortnight, the- oretically the sunniest spell of the year, heralds the heating industry's great midsummer spending spree —an annual assault by ad- vertising as predictable as the travel trade's post- Christmas campaign., The purveyors of gas, electricity, oil and coal— and all the relevant appli- ance-makers-----compete with each other at our expense for our custom, trying to persuade those of us who are still heating our homes in a ran- dom manner to get with it and get centralised. Or insulated. Or oil-fired. Or all-electric.
There is no doubt that a good central heating system is both cheaper to run and cosier to live with than casual freelance heating. But when Which? reported on central heating systems back in December, 1961, 20 per cent of the 600 members who responded to their questionnaires on the subject were dissatisfied with their central heating and the vast majority of the complaints could be traced back to faulty installation. And judging by the pile of letters I have beside me from sad central heaters, the only thing that has improved is the industry's promotional activity. There is more of it.
Take this typical winter's tale. 'We were not innocents in the heating world,' wrote a cold reader from Kensington. 'We had read Which? and all the central heating supplements in the posh "Sundays." We chose engineers recom- mended by the Heating Centre (34 Mortimer Street, WI) and approved by the Gas Council. We also knew—or thought we knew—that the only way to be sure of being warm in the winter was to get weaving on the central heating in June.'
Her heating contract was signed in the third week in June, and the men promised to start work early in July. Mid-July came and went. No men, no equipment. 'Sorry,' they said, 'We had an urgent job to finish and now it's the annual holidays. We'll be round in early August and put all we've got into the job and clear it up in six weeks.'
Someone came at the end of August. All through September there was one man and an occasional mate tinkering about the place. 'Sorry for the delays,' said the solitary tinkerer, 'this job needs more men, otherwise I'll be here till Christmas.' He was.
True, by November, there was some heating in the bedrooms but none in the living rooms— due to delays (from June to December() in de- livering the convectors. The week before the Christmas decorations went up the radiators were installed, but were still cold and uncased and it took more than a little tinsel and holly to disguise their ungainly nudity. Although the brochure had shown the radiators discreetlY hidden, the installers hadn't bothered to order the boxing.
But -on Christmas Eve our luckless correspon- dent came home at midnight from a party td find the house stone cold. Even the warm radiators were frigid. The boiler has been wrongly wired up,' said the man from the Gas Board's Emer- gency Squad—who, to do them justice, were round within the hour. (One big pull gas users have over the rest of society—the Gas Board are too frightened of explosions to procrastinate.) 'This lady was remarkably unlucky,' said the Heating Centre with commendable sympathy. 'But quite untypical.' That's what they think. Let me tell them about the lady from Islington who wanted ducted air heating in her terraced Georgian house but gave up the idea when a so-called heating engineer said it could not be done without lowering all the ceilings in the house. By the time she discovered that he was wrong she had had a gas boiler and radiators installed. Then there is the case of the blocked- off french window. A dim heating mechanic, instructed by his superiors to place radiators under the window in each room, solemnly planted one radiator squarely in front of the french windows leading to the garden. A National Coal Board advertisement for their famous house-warming plan had the desired effect on a Surrey reader. He ordered a solid fuel stove and a concrete coal bunker. He posted the appropriate forms at the end of August and sat back waiting for action from the solid-fuel people. Because this gentleman was imprudent enough to live in accommodation which he did not own, two months, a dozen letters, and a fist- ful of forms later, he was still playing footsY with the bureaucratic machine. By the time be wrote to me he was on his way out to buy tvve paraffin heaters and to make a deal with tbc 'pink' man.
As ElizaJbeth Gundrey says in her recent Penguin on servicing—and as all these grumbles
confirm—mammoth advertising campaigns have whipped up a demand for central heating that the industry is not quite ready to meet. The most notable deficiency is of engineers trained to do the installing. This means that for any major job it is essential to employ a heating engineer en- , titled to add the legend MIHVE to his name.
Anyone having trouble finding a firm with qualified men on the strength can write to the .Heating and Ventilating Contractors Associa- tion (Coastal Chambers, 172 Buckingham Palace Road, SWI ). Although some of the firms on their register don't think in terms of anything smaller than an office block. it does include many geared to tackle domestic jobs. The same people have also prepared a 2s. 6d. booklet useful to anyone planning a small-bore system. It can be used by the householder to ensure that he gets adequately detailed estimates (vital in any future disputes with the heating firm, as the estimate is the householder's only evidence that work paid for has in fact been done). The booklet also helps him to keep some check on the day-to-day achievements of the workmen. By the end of next month they will have a similar pamphlet :dealing with ducted air systems.
Previous page
