Have you ever wondered what professionals use for themselves at home?
What do doctors do when they feel ill? What does an interior designer’s home look like? Or what’s a motor mechanic’s favourite brand of car?
If you knew, I bet you’d find some great tips to make your own life a little easier.
So today, I thought I’d share a few helpful things I use at home as a heating engineer and plumber. Maybe you’ll find them useful, too…
Hot Outside Tap
You may already have a cold outside tap, but a hot tap outside feels like a real luxury, even though it’s not that expensive to install.
It’s great for when you’re washing the car because you don’t need to go back inside for a bucket of hot water.
For muddy pets, it allows you to wash them outside, without them getting too cold.
And for children, it’s ideal for filled paddling pools and playing with water in the summer.
Honeywell Evohome
This is probably the best purchase I’ve made in the last year.
Honeywell Evohome is a heating controls system that replaces your thermostat and programmer. What I love about it – and the thing that makes it different from other controls – is you can set and program each of your room’s temperature’s separately.
Work from home in the spare room? You can turn the heating off everywhere except the spare room during the day.
Planning on having a relaxing bath after work? Grab your phone and turn up the heating in the bathroom, without changing the heat anywhere else.
One of your children can’t stand a warm bedroom? Set their room to be cool 24 hours a day and keep the rest of the house toasty.
Honestly, our house is so comfortable and controllable now, I don’t know how we managed before. The only downside is the price. It’s expensive, but I’d imagine the money you could save from not heating unnecessary rooms may pay for it over time.
Water Softener
This is another life changing purchase.
I fitted ours shortly after we moved house a few years ago because in our last house, lime scale ruined all of our taps.
It didn’t matter what we did, the limescale just kept coming back. It would mess up our taps, coat our shower screen and bathroom tiles, and generally create a lot of cleaning work. I’d also end up changing our taps every couple of years because of the scale.
So when we moved and were planning to change the bathroom and kitchen, I thought I’d install a water softener as part of the renovation project. It made such a huge difference. Even after 3 years, our taps are still shiny, the shower screen doesn’t get marks, everything is easy to clean, and best of all, the water feels lovely when you have a shower!
The downside is you need to top the softener up with salt, but it’s quite cheap (a bag is about £10 and lasts about a month) and preferable to hours of elbow grease getting scale off your taps.
All 3 of these have made me and my family’s life a little easier – and maybe they’ll make your life easier too. And let’s face it, we could all do with a little relief right now. So in a small way, to make things a bit better, I’m running a 10% off sale until the end of the month (May 21h. That’s 10% off any of the 3 things above – or any other plumbing, heating, or boiler work you may need. Just quote the code TBMAY21 when booking.
And as ever, if you need me, you can ring 01322 788418, email hello@thamesboilers.co.uk, or book online at booking.thamesboilers.co.uk.
Thanks and stay safe,
-George