Lyra's Travels

Tuesday 16^th November

I think we fitted the “double glazing” just in time because the weather has been terrible recently. As with most of the country we have been battered by high winds and torrential rain. Rain is ok as long as you don't have to go out in it, but wind rocks the boat around. Lying in bed and feeling it move around under you isn't too bad, but these things aren't meant to be seaworthy just canal and river, so rocking around is not something we experience often. To cap it all the movement causes the tv to lose the signal sometimes; life can be a bitch!

Last Friday I finally got around to doing the annual service of our Eberspacher diesel central heating unit. The burner had started to get that rumbling, fluffing noise which is the usual sign that it needs cleaning so out came the spanners, gaskets and seals along with a cleaned out burner tube. All went well, and I re-installed it and fired up. No trouble, but that night the thing started making an awful racket. A high pitched scream which sounded like the air fan bearing. Oh no! thinks I, we've been here before, twice I've had to replace the air motor and it's damned expensive. On the assumption that it coincided with my service I had to have a look just to see if anything I had done may have caused it but I was convinced that the noise was a bearing and we steeled ourselves for the expense.

This morning I plucked up the go, drive and ambition to whip it out and have a look. First inspection of the fan motor didn't show up anything which I could put my finger on, so on the off chance that it was something else I dug deeper. When I got the burner tube out I found that it had a slight crack in it and it seems as if that may have been the source of the noise, the crack causing a resonation of the flame. I replaced the tube with the old one which I had now cleaned and so far (touch wood) it has been quiet.