This is because the Heatmiser hardware contains two relays (presumably so it can be shared with models that also incorporate hot water control), and thermostats shipped prior to 26th January 2012 (which includes mine) are programmed to use the one on the left for central heating, whereas newer thermostats use the one on the right (PDF link - note that although it specifically mentions 1.3 thermostats, mine was a 1.2 and it had the same issue):

To combat this problem, Heatmiser have two sets of firmware – the “A” set for older thermostats and the “B” set for newer thermostats. Unbeknownst to me, I had received version 1.6b when I should have been sent 1.6a.

There are two options to fix this – either have Heatmiser send out a programmer with the 1.6a firmware, which would take a few days, or – as I did – simply rewire the thermostat as per the corrected wiring diagram. Obviously I recommend that you hire a qualified electrician to do this if you’re not proficient yourself.

Unfortunately it’s not possible to determine which firmware you have been sent until you’ve flashed your thermostat with it, so if you decide to upgrade, I recommend you check the label on the rear of your device and check with Heatmiser that they are sending the correct firmware type (A for the top diagram marked with a cross, B for the middle diagram marked with a tick).

The Snap’n'Save process itself was very quick and easy and definitely something I’ll be using again. It took less than 24 hours for the receipt image to be approved and for the cashback to show in my account. In this case it was 50p cashback on a £1 4-pack of Mars Bars – bargain!

On first impression, the TCB site doesn’t look as polished or well-designed as the Quidco site, and this carries through to the mobile app. Like the Quidco app, it’s not yet optimised for the iPhone 5, so it appears vertically letterboxed. Also, the In-Store section is a bit of a pain to use: it shows the available offers as a carousel that you have to navigate by swiping right to left, rather than a simple list. It’s a universal app, so works on the iPad, although it’s clearly designed to be used in portrait mode only – it looks very strange in landscape.

Unlike Quidco, which retains the first £5 cashback you earn each year as an admin fee, there is no charge to use TopCashBack. Also they have a unique “top-up” feature, so as a new member you earn 101% of the cashback that TCB receives from the retailer. The extra 1% is funded by sponsorship and advertising on the site (in contrast, the Quidco site is ad-free). As you earn more cashback, the top-up amount increases up to a maximum of 10% (i.e. you earn 110% of the cashback). I did a quick straw poll of a few of my favourite retailers, and generally the TCB rate was 101% of Quidco’s and occasionally even higher. However, Quidco do sometimes have limited-time exclusive rates that TCB seem to be unable to beat.

I will keep my Quidco account for those occasions, and also to take advantage of a couple of features than TCB doesn’t yet have – instore cashback (you securely register your credit/debit card numbers on the Quidco site and then automatically receive cashback for card purchases in participating retailers) and check-in cashback (you receive a small amount, typically 5p-25p, for pressing a button in the Quidco mobile app when you’re near to participating stores). Apart from that, I look forward to using my new TCB account.

Please note that if you sign up to either TopCashBack or Quidco via the links in this post, I will receive a kickback. Thanks!

However I was pleased to hear the announcement yesterday that nano SIMs would be available from all O2 stores that afternoon. I visited the Rugby town centre store shortly after 1pm and was told that they did have them in stock, but they weren’t authorised to release them until Friday. I thought this was a little strange, but perhaps the news from O2 HQ was a little slow to trickle down to the stores.

When I got back to my computer, I started a live chat with a customer service agent on the O2 website. After a bit of to-and-froing, the agent told me that O2 had originally planned to release the nano SIMs on that day, but this had now been postponed to Friday 21 September, the iPhone 5 launch date. I asked the agent to request that the website and Twitter feed be updated with this development, and he assured me that this was already in hand.

I also decided to tweet the official O2 Twitter account to find out what was going on – I seemed to be getting mixed messages and wasn’t sure who was right. Their reply was that all stores were providing SIMs from that day (Monday) and the confusion should be cleared up now.

However when I returned the store today, the staff there were still adamant that I couldn’t have my nano SIM until Friday. In fact they were now saying that they didn’t have any, a blatant lie given what I’d been told previously. I tweeted O2 back to let them know that the issue was still unresolved, and also embarked upon another live chat. This time I explained my difficulties obtaining a nano SIM from the store and asked if the agent would order one to be posted out instead. He replied with “Ok”, then said it would take a few minutes to sort out, and finally came back and said that I could actually pick one up from any store and sent me a link to find my nearest store!

So I phoned the recently-opened store at Junction 1 Retail Park. Someone answered almost immediately and said that they did have nano SIMs available to hand out to customers. I went down to the store, and within five minutes had the new nano SIM in my hand. Akmal, the member of staff who served me, even processed the SIM swap request for me. The new nano SIM is now working in my iPhone 4 (using the included adaptor) ready to switch over to my iPhone 5 when it arrives on Friday, rather than me having to queue up on launch day for a SIM, assuming there were any left.

Judging by some of the comments on Twitter and O2′s own community forums (here and here), I’m far from the only person who’s had trouble getting hold of a nano SIM from stores. It seems that O2 head office and the stores aren’t singing from the same hymn sheet in some cases, the end result being a lot of frustrated and dissatisfied customers.

Before announcing the release of the nano SIMs on the web, O2 really should have made sure that all stores were geared up (and staff sufficiently briefed) to start handing them out. Even better, they could have enabled online ordering, like they do for micro SIMs currently: that system works beautifully; I used it a few days ago to order a micro SIM for my wife (who is inheriting my iPhone 4.)

Obviously I don’t have first-hand experience of other network operators’ nano SIM rollouts, but I can’t imagine they’ve been as shambolic as this, and although the eventual positive outcome at the Junction 1 store went some way towards renewing my faith in the company, the overall experience has made me think twice about blindly renewing my O2 contract each year, given that their customer service appears to have taken a nosedive of late.

1. Install the ‘motion’package:sudo apt-get install motion

   This should automatically install the required ‘ffmpeg’ package – if not you can just do sudo apt-get install ffmpeg.
2. Edit the config file:

   sudo nano/etc/motion/motion.conf

   To enable daemon mode (so you can run the software in the background without it tying up your terminal):

   daemon on

   To increase the resolution to the maximum supported by the EyeToy, change the following lines:width 640
height 480

   If you want the stream to be viewable from other computers on the network (rather than just the Pi itself):

   webcam_localhost off

   If you want to change the port on which the stream is served (default 8080) – replace 1234 with the desired port number:

   webcam_port 1234

   By default, the camera will only start capturing images (and video) if it detects motion. If you want to take regular snapshots whether motion is detected or not, you can change the following line (the value is in seconds):

   snapshot_interval 60

   (Press Ctrl+X, Y then Enter to save changes and quit the nano editor)

   There are loads of other things you can do such as enable a basic remote control interface, tweak the JPEG quality, set up regular snapshots (by default, snapshots are taken only when motion is detected), customise the text which is overlaid onto the image and change the location to which images are saved (by default these go into /tmp/motion which is deleted whenever the Pi is rebooted). Just have a browse through the config file which is fairly well-commented and self-explanatory.

3. Now plug the EyeToy into a USB port on your Pi. The two LEDs (one red, one blue) should illuminate. These are not necessary for webcam use so you may want to cover them with black electrical tape or similar.
4. Start up ‘motion’ in interactive mode (this is a text-mode app which you can run from the terminal, you don’t need to be in the ‘startx’ GUI:sudo motion -n

   (Without the sudo, I get permission errors which I haven’t yet figured out how to resolve).
5. Browse to the IP address of your Raspberry Pi on the port you configured earlier (or 8080 if you didn’t change it) in a Web browser. Firefox works fine, but at the time of writing the current stable version of Chrome seems to have a bug with motion JPEG streams, and only shows the first frame. You can work around this by embedding the stream into a simple HTML page, which works fine in Chrome:<img src="http://ip.address.here:1234" />

   Alternatively you can open the stream in VLC. You can also browse to the feed on the Raspberry Pi itself, but you will have to install Chrome or Firefox on it as the built-in Midori browser doesn’t support MJPEG streams.

6. Once you are satisfied, press Ctrl+C in the terminal to stop the server. You can then start it up in daemon mode:sudo motion

7. If you need to stop the daemon, get its process ID:cat /var/run/motion/motion.pid

   And kill it (replace 12345 with the ID from the above file):sudo kill 12345

   If you want to automate this:

   sudo nano /usr/bin/killmotion

   And type in or paste the following lines:

   #!/bin/bash
sudo kill `cat /var/run/motion/motion.pid`

   (Again press Ctrl+X, Y then Enter to save changes and quit)

   Finally make the script executable:
   sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/killmotion

   And whenever you need to stop the motion daemon, just type:
   killmotion

And there you have it – a simple baby monitor, security camera or basis for time-lapse photography!

The files can build up quickly though, particularly if you enable regular snapshots, so make sure you have plenty of space on the SD card you are using.

Unfortunately, like the original poster, I noticed that occasional frames had a strange form of corruption (example), which unfortunately the camera detects as motion (although you can tweak the config file to only trigger after a number of consecutive frames of motion). I suspect this may be due to the Raspberry Pi not providing quite enough power to run the camera stably. A powered USB hub may solve the problem, or more drastically, desoldering the two LEDs. Reducing the resolution back down to 352×288 apparently fixes the problem, but obviously means lower image fidelity.

If you don’t already have an EyeToy or spare webcam, it’s probably best to wait for the official Raspberry Pi camera module. It will plug into a dedicated connector on the board so you’re not hogging a USB port, and will obviously be more stable. The pre-release version uses a 14-megapixel sensor, but it’s likely that a lower resolution sensor will be used in the final release to keep the costs down. A good-quality 720p (just under 1 megapixel) sensor would be nice, 1080p (just over 3 megapixels) even better.

Although the project site mentions that it has been tested on Raspberry Pi, I just couldn’t get past one of the steps. A little bit of Googling revealed a possible solution, and it worked. Be warned, the process takes a little while but in my opinion the results are definitely worth it.

Installation of Subversion and the heatmiser-wifi software

To get hold of the software, you have to check it out using the Subversion (SVN) source control system. So the first step is to install SVN:

sudo apt-get install subversion

You can then run the following command to download the heatmiser-wifi software:

svn checkout http://heatmiser-wifi.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ ~/heatmiser-wifi-read-only

This will create a folder called heatmiser-wifi-read-only in your home directory. If you want to specify a different path, edit the command as appropriate.

Install Perl and essential packages

Check that Perl version 5 is installed by running:

perl -v

This should return some output starting with the following (or similar):

This is perl, v5.10.1 (*) built for arm-linux-gnueabi-thread-multi

If not, install Perl using:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install perl5

Now you need to install the required packages:

curl -L http://cpanmin.us | perl - --sudo App::cpanminus
sudo cpanm CGI Cwd DBI File::HomeDir Getopt::Std IO::Socket JSON LWP::UserAgent Proc::Daemon Proc::PID::File Time::HiRes
sudo apt-get install libxml-simple-perl
sudo cpanm XML::Simple

This takes a long time, so you may want to have a cup of tea, run a bath or go for a walk!

(Note that the original instructions had the CPAN modules listed on one line, omitting the apt-get before XML::Simple, but this didn’t work for me, hence the change. Also I had trouble getting the standard cpan command to work on the Pi due to its limited hardware, hence using cpanminus instead.)

Test the installation

Run the following command, adjusting the path if necessary, replacing 192.168.0.100 with the actual IP address of your Heatmiser and 1234 with the PIN number:

~/heatmiser-wifi-read-only/bin/heatmiser.pl -h 192.168.0.100 -p 1234

You should get some output like this:

Heatmiser PRT version 1.2
Thermostat is ON (heating mode)
Time 2012-07-07 21:45:59
Temperature 23.5 deg C (internal)
Target 17 deg C
Heating is OFF
Feature 01: Temperature format C
Feature 02: Switching differential 1 deg C
Feature 03: Frost protect 1
Feature 04: Frost temperature 15 deg C
Feature 05: Output delay 0 minutes
Feature 06: Comms # n/a
Feature 07: Temperature limit 0 deg C
Feature 08: Sensor selection internal
Feature 09: Floor limit n/a
Feature 10: Optimum start disabled hours
Feature 11: Rate of change 20 minutes / deg C
Feature 12: Program mode 5/2 day
Weekday 1: 07:00 20 deg C
2: 07:30 17 deg C
3: 17:00 20 deg C
4: 21:30 17 deg C
Weekend 1: 09:30 20 deg C
2: 21:30 17 deg C

For the rest of the steps to work, you need to store the IP address and PIN number in a config file. To do this:

sudo nano /etc/heatmiser.conf

Type the following two lines, substituting 192.168.0.100 with your thermostat’s actual IP address, and 1234 with its PIN:

HOST 192.168.0.100
PIN 1234

Press Ctrl+X and type Y to save the file.

You should now be able to run the following command (same as before but without the IP and password, which will now be read from the conf file).

~/heatmiser-wifi-read-only/bin/heatmiser.pl

Set up the web interface

Happily the project’s web interface instructions seem to work fine on the Pi without any changes.

I have also set up logging and charting of external temperature (via the Met Office API). Frustratingly, my Met Office API key didn’t work straight away – it kept returning Invalid key please register at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/ddc via both the heatmiser_weather.pl script and the “preview data” feature on the Met Office site itself. Also note that it will take up to five minutes for the weather table to start populating, unless you’ve increased the rate in the heatmiser.conf file.

As a web developer, one of the first things I thought of doing was installing a web server, and decided to go for lighttpd as it’s designed to be lightweight and efficient, which is just the ticket for the Raspberry Pi and its limited hardware resources.

Installing it was as simple as sudo apt-get install lighttpd – or it should have been! The installation failed with “chown: invalid group: ‘www-data:www-data’. To fix this, I ran two commands:

sudo adduser www-data
sudo addgroup www-data

(The first command probably isn’t necessary, as it returned “adduser: The user `www-data’ already exists.”)

I then re-ran sudo apt-get install lighttpd again and it succeeded.

Update 30/05/2012:
I have since decided to switch to Apache and PHP. After running apt-get remove lighttpd, I just had to run:

apt-get install php5

This installs all the basics. Apache still needs the www-data group and will refuse to start if you haven’t already run sudo addgroup www-data.

If you get 404 errors when trying to install PHP (as I did), run the following commands and try again:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Overall, I’m happy with the product but I found it a little tricky to set up. The instructions don’t go into a huge amount of detail, a problem which is compounded by the fact that the Heatmiser support site was devoid of any information on this particular model at the time of writing, so I have discussed my difficulties below and explained how I resolved them.

Installation

I won’t go into too much detail on the physical installation, but suffice to say, most people should get the unit fitted by a qualified electrician. There’s only a page and a half of the small (A7 size) manual devoted to it, plus three wiring diagrams, and any mistakes could damage the thermostat and/or the boiler. The thermostat is designed to be flush mounted into a standard 35mm deep single back box. It can be surface mounted but it won’t look as good, particular as the thermostat is a few centimetres larger than the back box at each edge. I chose the latter option to save money, but will have it flush mounted at a later date. I will be interested to see what effect flush-mounting has on the Wi-Fi signal strength, if any.

Appearance & usability

The thermostat is essentially a PRT-TS with an added Wi-Fi card, and it looks exactly the same from the outside. It’s reasonably modern-looking (as far as thermostats go!) with a touchscreen illuminated by a blue backlight. It displays the room temperature in the middle of the screen, which can be adjusting using the up/down icons below it. A slight niggle is that it can be difficult to see what you are doing – the backlight doesn’t come on until you touch an icon, by which time it is too late. I would personally prefer the backlight to come on when touching any part of the screen (not just an icon) and the unit to only respond to icon presses when the backlight is on.

A nice feature is the “Screen” icon which locks the screen for 15 seconds, allowing time to clean it without accidentally activating any functions.

You can also view and set heating programmes, set the clock, enable temperature hold and holiday modes from the touch screen. I found setting the time slightly strange, as the down button changes the hour down and the up button changes the minute up – changing the date works in a similar way with the month and day – but this is something that is rarely necessary to change and can be done from the Web interface or iPhone app anyway.

Wi-Fi setup

Setting up the Wi-Fi connectivity nominally requires a Windows PC and the configuration utility supplied on CD. However, when plugged in via USB, the device presents itself as a USB mass storage device (albeit a very small one: 6.5KB) containing a single file – CONFIG.TXT – which contains the network configuration information in plain text, which could easily be edited by hand by users of other platforms such as Mac or Linux. The file is fairly self-explanatory – the only thing worth pointing out is that the KEYMODE parameter (wireless encryption type) must be either WPA, WEP or OPEN.  There’s a slight security issue in that if someone were to steal your thermostat, they’d have access to your wireless key, thermostat password and PIN, but this is a fairly unlikely scenario!

I had trouble getting the unit to connect to my Wi-Fi network until I switched my router (Linksys WRT54GS with Tomato firmware) from WPA only to WPA+WPA2 encryption. I’m not sure whether this means that the PRT-TS needs WPA2 encryption to operate (despite the configuration utility only showing WPA), or whether there is an issue with my particular router, but if you’re having trouble, it’s worth enabling WPA2 on your router. Before I managed to get WPA+WPA2 working, I tried using WEP encryption as a test but the configuration utility wouldn’t let me save the changes. I didn’t play with the OPEN option, so I’m not sure whether this refers to unencrypted Wi-Fi (and therefore will ignore any username/password) or WEP Open System encryption.

The device requires a static IP address, and port 8068 must be forwarded via the router if remote connection via the iPhone app is required.

It’s worth noting that the front part of the thermostat detaches from the rear, so it can easily be removed once installed, and the front part will power up when attached via USB which means you can set up and test the Wi-Fi connectivity before installing the unit on the wall. This isn’t mentioned in the manual, and neither is the fact that a Wi-Fi icon (similar to the one used on the iPhone) appears on the display when connected successfully.

Browser interface

The browser interface is full-featured if a little basic-looking – it’s reminiscent of a router interface from ten years ago. The so-called “Live View”  panel on the right shows the actual temperature (to one decimal place), set temperature and heat status, and a refresh button as it doesn’t seem to auto-refresh. The main interface allows you to view and adjust heating programmes, temporarily override the temperature, lock the keypad remotely, set the clock and change network settings. There doesn’t seem to be a way to change the port on which the Web interface is accessible, which would be a nice feature to have.

It doesn’t contain any form of logging functionality, so it’s not possible to view temperature changes over time. This would be nice to see in a future firmware update, but I’n not holding my breath.

iPhone app

The iPhone app, a free download from the App Store, is similarly utilitarian. It allows you to see the current temperature (rounded to the nearest degree, unlike the browser interface), set temperature (which can be adjusted) and heat status. You can also view and adjust heating programmes via the app.

One quirk of the app is that you have to select whether you want to connect locally (i.e. when you are on your home Wi-Fi network)  or remotely (via the Internet). It would be nice if the app could determine whether you are home or away and select the corresponding connection method dynamically.

The interface is fairly bland but it does the job. It’s a shame that the graphics aren’t retina ready, so they look jaggy on the iPhone 4 (which has been out for more than a year, so you would have expected Heatmiser to have updated their app!). It would also be nice if a future version of the app came with iPad support – the current version works fine on the iPad but doesn’t take advantage of the bigger screen.

I was left scratching my head for a while, as I was originally able to connect via my Web browser but not via the iPhone app. This resolved itself once I moved my router closer to the thermostat, so it seems that the protocol used by the iPhone app is less forgiving of low signal strength (and potential packet loss) than standard HTTP over TCP/IP. Again this is something that should perhaps be mentioned in the manual.

Conclusion

It’s a version 1 product, so is sometimes a little rough around the edges, but the hardware is solid and the product could easily be improved with updates to the Web interface and iPhone app. The manual is fairly basic, which I can understand is necessary to minimise the size and weight of the box, but why not include a more detailed version on the included CD and/or on the Web?

One final point is that I was slightly perturbed to find that the thermostat, which I paid £150 plus delivery for via Heatmiser’s own shop, is available for as little as £126 delivered from some resellers, so it pays to shop around!

Update

Heatmiser tweeted me and pointed me towards their document download area which contains some useful information. They also say they’re working on a new version of the iPhone app, iPad and Android support, multi-zone and logging functionality, and suggest that users email support@heatmiser.co.uk with any further suggestions.

Also, the £126.20 price I found is actually ex-VAT (thanks Luke!) so it is actually best to buy from Heatmiser directly.

Clearly the best solution is to educate users to use the Title field properly for newly-created documents (see Title vs Name), and also to update all existing documents, but it’s a big task and for now we have opted for the”quick fix” of showing the document filename in search results. Here’s how you do it:

• Ensure that the IsDocument managed property is set for use within scopes:
  • Browse to Central Administration
  • Click on your Shared Service Provider
  • Click Search settings
  • Click Metadata property mappings
  • Find the IsDocument property and set Use in scope to True
  • Click OK
• Edit the page and modify the Search Core web part
• Under Results Query Options, edit the Selected Columns property to include Filename:
  <Column Name=”Filename”/>
  (it doesn’t matter where as long as it is between <Columns> and </Columns>, and obviously not halfway through another <Column> tag)

• Find the following line (it should be in the Result template):
  <xsl:variable name=”id” select=”id”/>
• Underneath it, add the following two lines:
  <xsl:variable name=”filename” select=”filename”/>
  <xsl:variable name=”isdocument” select=”isdocument”/>
• A few lines down, replace the code starting with <span class=”srch-Title”> and ending in</span> with the following:
  <span class=”srch-Title”>
  <a href=”{$url}” id=”{concat(‘CSR_’,$id)}” title=”{$url}”>
  <xsl:if test=”$isdocument &#61; 1″>
  <xsl:value-of select=”filename”/>
  </xsl:if>
  <xsl:if test=”$isdocument &#61; 0″>
  <xsl:choose>
  <xsl:when test=”hithighlightedproperties/HHTitle[. != '']“>
  <xsl:call-template name=”HitHighlighting”>
  <xsl:with-param name=”hh” select=”hithighlightedproperties/HHTitle” />
  </xsl:call-template>
  </xsl:when>
  <xsl:otherwise><xsl:value-of select=”title”/></xsl:otherwise>
  </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:if>
  </a>
  <br/>
  </span>
  

I found this tip on the TechNet forums, although it didn’t work as-is because the author had forgotten to declare the isdocument variable. It has been tested in MOSS 2007 but will possibly also work in SharePoint 2010. If desired, you could easily tweak the XSL above to show the document title as well as the filename.

There’s no easy way of changing the OSSSearchResults.aspx page that appears when you do a “This Site” search, and even if you do, it’s unsupported and any changes will most likely be lost next time you install a MOSS service pack. If you have ISAPI_Rewrite installed, as we do, you can easily redirect site searches to the Search Center using this line:

RewriteRule ^(.*)OSSSearchResults.aspx(.*)$ /SearchCenter/Pages/results.aspx$2 [I,L,RP]

I thought I’d be OK to wait, but having played with one in the Birmingham Bullring Apple Store last week (who didn’t have any stock available to take away on the day), I started getting twitchy fingers – as well as considering going for a 32GB model instead of the 16GB I’d ordered through Apple – so started watching the very useful iPad-Stock.co.uk website.

After a couple of false alarms – Tesco Direct occasionally showed stock but every time I got to the checkout, I was told it was out of stock, and a friend managed to order one from HMV only for his order status to change to “pre-order” within hours – I eventually managed to find some stock, this time at Best Buy, the US electronics giant who have recently opened up shop (physically and online) in the UK. All went well, until I put my credit card details in… declined!

I tried a couple of different cards – one credit, one debit – and strangely both of those failed as well. My phone then rang – it was Tesco Bank, the issuer of my main credit card, who wanted to go through a few transactions with me to make sure they weren’t fraudulent. Having verified that the declined Best Buy transaction (along with a few previous purchases elsewhere) were legit, the operator unblocked my card and said that I should be able to put the order through again.

Great, I thought, so I input my card details again – still no joy! So I phoned Best Buy, who helpfully told me that my account had been blocked for 24 hours due to the original declined transaction and I was welcome to try again tomorrow. When I asked if there was any way around this, I was told not – I couldn’t even order over the phone. A friend of mine had a similar experience, so I wonder how many potential orders Best Buy have lost out on due to this dubious “security” measure – I can imagine a lot of banks and card issuers have declined cards as people suddenly dropping some £500 on an electronics website could well appear fraudulent without speaking to the customer first.

Knowing that the Best Buy stock was likely to have run out by the following day, I decided to go elsewhere. At the time, Insight were showing stock of the black 32GB Wi-Fi model that I wanted, so I decided to place an order with them. The deal wasn’t as good as the Best Buy one, as I had to pay £12 delivery, but if it meant I could have the iPad in my hand sooner, I was happy to fork out.

I was pleased to see that the website accepted my credit card details… then dismayed when I got an email later saying that it had been declined. By the time I read the email on that same evening, Insight’s phone lines had closed, and as it was a Friday I wouldn’t be able to give them a different card to try until the following Monday. Another retail fail – why doesn’t the site have an option to update the payment method via the website when the phone lines are closed?

So, having exhausted my options, I gave up for the day. At around 10.30 this morning, I had a quick look at iPad-Stock, not expecting to see anything, but to my surprise there was stock showing at Comet. They were offering free delivery for Tuesday, or £6 for a Monday (7am-6pm) delivery. It’s not like me to pay extra to receive something a day early, but this is the iPad 2 we’re talking about… My order went through successfully and I got an email confirmation, so all good so far.

I haven’t cancelled my Apple order yet – I thought I’d wait until my Comet order is fulfilled, so I have something to fall back on in case of problems. However, a friend of mine also put an order through with Comet and tried to cancel his Apple order immediately, and was told that the order was already being shipped and couldn’t be cancelled – so he ended up cancelling his Comet order. I’ll wait and see what happens on Monday – worst case is I can’t cancel it and have to return it to Apple when it arrives, or sell it on to a friend or colleague (at cost price, naturally – I can’t be bothered eBaying it).

Towards the end of March – coincidentally, a week before my first annual inspection and service was due – the boiler failed and I called npower out. They offered me an appointment for two days later, so I agreed with my employer to work from home on that day.

The engineer arrived and set to work looking at the boiler. He thought that either the gas valve or PCB needed replacing, although he didn’t seem to perform any extensive diagnosis in order to reach this conclusion. He then started the annual service inspection, and at this point noticed that there was a small gap between the boiler and the flue because the original installer hadn’t properly attached the bottom of the flue pipe to the fan assembly. Unfortunately the flue pipe was cemented in place through the wall of the garage in which the boiler is installed. He said that npower could fix this, but as a pre-existing fault it would be chargeable at £200 and they wouldn’t necessarily do a great job as they are not installation specialists, so I would be better off getting a local gas fitter to rectify the problem, which would probably take around an hour and cost in the region of £80. The npower engineer said that once the flue had been fitted correctly, I should contact the call centre and book an appointment so he could come back and fit a new gas valve. In the meantime, he said he had no choice but to declare the boiler as “Immediately Dangerous” and disconnect it from the gas supply.

The engineer left, and I immediately contacted Custom Heat, a local (Rugby-based) gas installation company, about whom I had previously heard good things. They were able to come out the following day after 1pm, which I was pleased with as I was eager to get the issue resolved.

When the Custom Heat engineer arrived, he took a look at the boiler and told me categorically that there was no problem with the flue installation, and that the npower engineer was wrong to condemn the boiler. He reconnected the boiler to the gas supply, charged me a £72 callout fee and left.

I got straight on the phone to the npower call centre to explain this. The operator was very apologetic and promised that she would call me back by the end of the day. This didn’t happen, and when I called the following day to chase this, I was told they had no record of the conversation. So I explained everything in detail again, requesting that the information be added onto my account notes, and was given an appointment for the npower engineer to return five days later.

The engineer arrived and, to my surprise, he had no knowledge of what had happened with Custom Heat. He was still adamant that the flue was incorrectly fitted and therefore the boiler was unsafe. He demonstrated this by dismantling the boiler and shining a torch up from the combustion chamber into the flue, and we could both see that there was an escape of light. He said that unfortunately he’d have to condemn the boiler once again and wouldn’t be able to replace any parts until the boiler had been made safe.

So I phoned Custom Heat to explain the situation. The operator said she would get the engineer to call me back as soon as possible. Around ten minutes later, he called me so I briefly explained the situation again and put him on the npower engineer who was still on the premises. The Custom Heat engineer told him that he they would come out and fix the flue with no charge, and that I should call the office to arrange this, which I did. The operator initially tried to backtrack on the “free fix” promise, saying that there would be no additional callout fee, but parts and labour would be chargeable. I didn’t accept this and they did back down and send an installer out within 15 minutes. As luck would have it, the npower engineer was fortunately still here and he was able to explain his findings.

The installer was very good and completed the work within an hour and a half, albeit with some difficulty as the boiler was installed approximately seven years ago and the fittings had started to corrode in place. Unfortunately, by the time he’d finished, the npower engineer had left, so I had to book a third appointment with them, for three days’ time.

The npower engineer arrived, was happy with the flue, and started carrying out a proper diagnosis of the original fault. He decided that the gas valve wasn’t the problem after all, and it was actually the PCB. He didn’t have one with him, but was able to pick one up from a local supplier and fit it the same day, which did indeed get the boiler working.

So, after twelve days without heating or hot water (even the shower runs from the mains water), I was finally up and running again.

Clearly the original installer was at fault for not connecting the flue correctly, but I have no recourse as the central heating system was already fitted when we move in, and we were left no paperwork showing who installed it. Also Custom Heat were in the wrong for refusing to accept that there was a flue problem, and reconnecting the boiler without remedial work when the npower engineer had declared it unsafe. I can’t fault the npower engineer for erring on the side of caution and refusing the work on the boiler until it had been made safe, but things could have progressed much more quickly if the call centre staff had logged my issue correctly, and there wasn’t such a long lead time for appointments, which would have made the situation all the more unpleasant had it happened in the middle of winter.

Custom Heat deserve some credit for eventually fixing the problem for free, saving me approximately £60 in labour, although I’d have preferred to have paid and had it fixed first time around. They were also quick to come out on both occasions, unlike npower. I would hesitate to recommend Custom Heat based on my experience though, as they were happy to leave me with a visibly unsafe boiler.

I’m glad I had the npower cover, as it saved me paying £200-odd for a new PCB (although reconditioned boards are available on eBay for around £65) plus labour to diagnose the problem and fit the part. Fortunately my employer is flexible enough to allow me to work from home when necessary, so despite the inconvenience, I wasn’t out of pocket for four separate days I had to spend out of the office.

I haven’t decided whether I’ll renew my npower hometeam contract when it runs out. Most likely, I’ll switch to the British Gas equivalent which costs an extra £2/month for similar cover (albeit without the 50% cashback option), which could be worth it if they’re able to get out to me more quickly in the event of a boiler breakdown.