Maintenance - Boilers!
Monday, May 26, 2008 @ 11:02 PM
Now the season is really starting and the apartments are filling up the maintenance call outs start. I have been so busy lately with the rental side - it seems that late deals are the thing this year and everyone is booking last minute. Great for them - intense for me as you have to get everything prepared and cleaners organised in one go. No sooner are they in and the perfectly fine apartment seems to fall to bits!
We had some guests arrive last Wednesday, the apartment was cleaned the day before, everything fine, they got in ok but that night I had several calls on my mobile. It was around 8pm and I was trying to get the children to bed and the phone kept ringing. Once I managed to get downstairs I had three missed calls in about 5 minutes. I returned the call and it was guests saying they had no hot water, they were really unhappy. My husband was trying his best to get out in time for the football match but I said I had to pop out because the boiler was in a locked cupboard (owner has his personal stuff in there) so I couldn't ask them to check anything but had to go there to see for myself.
I got there within 20 minutes of her call. The lady of the group was really "cheesed" off so to speak, "they had paid for an apartment and there was no hot water - it wasn't on etc etc" I explained that it was cleaned the day before and everything had been fine so until we could check the boiler I couldn't do much. She had a right attitude! We checked the plug of the boiler which was fine and there was nothing obvious so called our "boiler" guy and he said he would be there first thing in the morning 09.30am. I apologised that she was without water but these things happen to apartments and someone would be out asap to fix it. It was fixed first thing the morning of the next day - the thermostat had gone. I thought that wasn't bad going - but the guests just thought it shouldn't have happened. How can you possibly control appliances?
Today we had a call from a long term tennant really fed up as the boiler was heating up then cutting out. It is a gas boiler and they tend to cut out if the temperature gets to hot. She has been going through a gas bottle every 2 weeks which I though was quite a lot. We have already had someone down to look at it so in the end we called the owners to see if they would agree to changing it to an electric one. They agreed - the prospect of an unhappy tennant and call out charges to check why the boiler wasn't working well convinced them. This property is relatively new - why they put gas boilers in is beyond me, normally the newer properties all have electric ones. A lot of people in this complex had already changed them.
So it seems this week is the week of the boilers - last week is we had to change a dishwasher - all go, go, go!