Scrubbed

Since my post on Sofa's last month we've eventually become the owners of 25 year old Chesterfield, acquired via friends of friends who are also in the midst of a renovation project, albeit one that has taken more than four years and they've still got a way to go.

The sofa arrived in a trailer looking a very dark brown but we thought we ought to give it a wipe down before using it....

Four washes later, including saddle soap as we were concerned the effect that washing up liquid and water were having on the leather, it looks a lot better and a fair bit lighter. The leather is still a nice dark brown, maybe slightly more tan than dark chocolate. To counter potential damage that the washing has done to the leather, removing the natural oils and drying it out, we've applied a leather oil comprising beeswax and lanolin. Bought from the local tack shop this is used to keep saddles and tack in top condition by feeding them and keeping them waterproof. The latter isn't an issue for the Chesterfield but it certainly needed feeding after the washes we've given it. (I say 'we', but it was mostly C who scrubbed it down.)

So, we're now the proud owners of another great bit of recycled furniture, which with a little more care and attention should last plenty more years yet. After our fruitless searching for new sofas and other chairs that are comfortable, affordable, well made and meet our ethical/environmental choices, it's great to have additional seating that has, with the exception of a few miles, some water, soap and elbow grease, made very little recent impact on the environment.

Service

One of the disadvantages of technological progress is that you need an expert to maintain and repair things - take a look under the bonnet of any car made in the past few years and you'll know exactly what I mean. This also applies to many domestics appliances. Add in a gas supply, as you would for a boiler, and you have to be Corgi or (as it's now known) Gas Safe registered. This isn't the case for solid fuel appliances.

Our Ecoflex pellet boiler has been running for 4 months now, and thanks to the bitterly cold weather it's been running at full load for much of the last 2! A few fault messages combined with the manual stating that it needs cleaning a couple of times per year prompted me to try dismantling it and giving it a clean/service last weekend.

I was pleased to find that it's pretty straightforward, with cleaning mostly comprising the removal of the burner and emptying ash and other deposits from the burner hearth. We've had some sintering (build up of gravel like particles) due to the ash becoming super heated, but this isn't unusual and as long as it's cleaned out regularly isn't expected to become a problem.

One of the two fault messages were 'check gate', which turns out to be a bad translation from the original Swedish and relates to an LED sensor in the pellet feed. A quick wipe with a cloth removed a build up of wood dust that was affecting this. The other was 'flame detector'; within the burner housing is a glass enclosed thermocouple and the glass had become blackened by ash and smoke. Another quick wipe with a cloth removed this and solved the problem.

I was relieved to get the boiler back together, and even more relieved that it fired up without any problems. So, okay,it needs more maintenance than a regular gas or oil boiler, but other than my time it doesn't cost anything to service. Long may that be the case!