Mountain Man makes a mistake

We have been experimenting with our heating system this winter and have found that if we keep the heating on all day but extremely low, the house stays warm and we don't use as much oil as when we turned it on and off during the day. And given that we're home a lot it's nice not to have to wear a coat and gloves in the house.

However, this last week has got a lot warmer and we made the decision that we'd drop back to putting the heating on once in the morning and once in the evening. When I got back from Edinburgh yesterday, where I've been for the last couple of days, the house was cold... but I thought well it's just our new regime and I'll get on with my work and maybe have an early night.

Mountain Man, who was to oversee the change over, went off before I got home to get up a mountain somewhere above Aviemore for the weekend. He's doing his Winter Skills training with Borders Search and Rescue, which should be fun as they're apparently supposed to be doing avalanche training, but given that the temperature has been as high as 11 degrees I think they'll have to use an inordinate amount of imagination. Anyway, MM was dealing with the boiler.

This morning I was very cold when I got up. Not a radiator on in the house and the outside thermometer said it was 4 degrees out there. I had a quick shower and then went down to get the dog out and breakfast ready and investigated what was going on with the boiler.

I shall have to have words with my man. Instead of flipping the switch to twice a day, he had flipped the other switch - the one that turns the heating off and keeps the water on - but he'd left it with the water being heated on low all day. I'm off out with the dog in the hope that by the time we get back from our morning saunter that the house will have warmed up a bit.

I'm so pleased the coffee plants are wrapped up in their fleece, I don't think they would have survived a night in the cold otherwise. Poor delicate things. I'm sure they'll have a thing or two to say to Mountain Man when he gets home.