The weak link in all of this... • 19 December 2007 • The SnowBlog

The weak link in all of this...

          
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Because I live surrounded by fields, the gas that runs my central heating comes, not from miles of pipes connecting to the North Sea, but from a tank in the garden. What's quite clever is that a telemetry device measures the levels of gas in the tank, then it looks for a mobile phone network and logs on to whichever one has the strongest signal. From there it makes a connection to the computers of its masters and updates them on whether I need a tanker to visit and top me up or not. I was told, when the telemetry unit was installed, that all I had to do was pay the occasional bill - everything else was automatic. But apparently there's a flaw in this system. Yesterday my hot water went cold. And when I checked, the boiler had shut down. Literally* five minutes later the phone rang to say that it looked like I was "low" on gas and would I like some. I asked if maybe in future that shouldn't happen before I ran out - that's how the previous owner said things worked. I was told that that's the norm, but I had opted instead to call them when I wanted gas. News to me. But why did an engineer visit recently to fit the clever telemetry unit then? So they can monitor levels - and call me just after I run out, apparently. I'm sitting here in a coat (in my kitchen) typing this and wondering whether to drive over to Em's and have a nice hot bath in a little while. I hope the truck comes and there's heat and hot water soon. My nose is cold. *I would never abuse the word 'literally'. Except for comedy purposes maybe. But this isn't one of those times.

Rob

The SnowBlog is one of the oldest publishing blogs, started in 2003, and it's been through various content management systems over the years. A 2005 techno-blunder meant we lost the early years, but the archives you're reading now go all the way back to 2005.

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