A milestone!

Well we now have heating & hot water, hooray! The heated skirting boards are now working in both bedrooms, the living room and the kitchen. Hopefully the hall will be done in a couple of weeks time, when I have some spare time.... It's great to have hot water too, I was able to wash the cups up today without the need for boiling kettles up. The Alpha Flowsmart set up appears to be working well too. I've given the system it's initial flush to remove flux residues and installation debris and am so glad I installed the Fernox TF1 filter system http://www.fernox.com/equipment/filters/total+filter+tf1 This is a smashing piece of kit. You'll see all the debris it collected, in the bucket in one of the pictures. The TF1 is installed on the return just before the boiler and prevents all this muck from getting into the boiler and causing havoc. I was well impressed, it collected all that debris within a relatively short running period, I'd recommend every boiler in the country be protected by a TF1 - amazing.
The heated skirting boards appear to be doing well too although they take a lot of bleeding out to remove all the air. They are basically pipes within the skirting and to remove air from pipes is more difficult than removing it from a traditional type radiator. Normally any air in a heating system would be pushed into the rad where it's easily removable - it's not quite as easy with the heated skirting's, it's achievable but just takes more time and possibly a slightly different approach to system design. As you'll see in the picture I've not fitted the bottom plinths or the corner covers yet, I'll wait until the floor coverings are all down before I do the 'finishing' touches. It'll be easier for the flooring guys to do their stuff without all the plinths/covers on and they can't get damaged if they're not in place can they?
Oh, I also fitted the new gully drain over the weekend too and ran some waste pipes to it. I now have the bath, dishwasher, kitchen sink and washing machine all connected to drainage - it's becoming more like a home every day...
There is still a lot of work to do but I'm slowly chipping away at it, to be moved in by Christmas was my goal and I am still aiming for that although I may be moving in with it un-finished. Wouldn't be too bad a thing though, the basics are there now. I can do the rest while I live there. Hmmm, maybe I'll wait until one of the showers are up & running and perhaps a toilet that can be flushed by pressing a button rather than filling a bucket!
It's happening though folks, we're on the home straight!
Almost forgot the piccie of the Spider & its web. Not really anything to do with the project, just thought it'd make a good picture.
And finally, I've recently discovered the 'stats' tab on the dashboard that allows me to see limited information on who's viewing the blog and how frequently etc. It's been read in the UK, USA, Australia, Denmark, Philippines, Italy, France, Canada, Germany, Poland and South Korea. I'm available for working holidays folks......