Well, it now looks like the water heating problem has now been fixed thanks to the helpful advice handed out by our friendly plumber.

The ball valve is now un-siezed and working nicely, and the air causing the airlock has been bled out of the system. The moral of this story is to check the level of water in the feeder tank regularly and move the ball valve about to stop the limescale from siezing it up, and if air does get into the system, turn the water heating on and off at half hourly intervals to force the air through the system to the bleed valve near the hot water cylinder.

I will make sure I remember this for future reference.

We’re having problems with our hot water systems the last couple of days. Boiler seems to be working ok, but the tank isn’t heating up, so I call our plumber.

The guy that we use is very good, and listens to what I tell him, and then gives me a few things to check. He seems to think that the ballcock on the small feeder tank in the roof might be seized closed meaning that there isn’t enough pressure in the system.

So when I get home, I check this, and yes the ballcock is seized closed, and there is about 1.5″ of water in the tank, so I fill the tank up as far as I dare, turn the water heating on, and leave it for half an hour. Still no joy with the tank heating up, so I call him back and he describes where to find the bleed valve on the tank, so I unscrew it and a little bit of air comes out, then nothing. So I’m told to turn everything off to settle, then loosen the bleed screw again later on before turning the water heating on again.

Well this time, more air comes out folowed by a bit of water, so something is working, I’ll leave it for 30 mins, then turn it off for 30 mins and try again later.

I can only praise this plumber, as many would have just said that they’d come out, then charge me an arm and leg for coming out, so its nice to have someone thats happy to help you try to sort it out before coming out to the house and charging money.

So thanks Ron.

I recently discovered an excellent piece of software called RoboGeo, which is used for geocoding photographs. RoboGeo can be downloaded from here.

To get the most out of this software, you need a GPS unit that is recording a tracklog whilst you are taking photographs. Once you get to your PC, you simply point RoboGeo at the folder containing your images, and either download the tracklog directly from your GPS or from a GPX file. Note, that when using Garmin GPS units, you need to download the active tracklog, and not a saved tracklog. Saving the tracklog removes the timestamps.

RoboGeo then compares the timestamp on the photo to the timestamp on the GPS tracklog, and works out where you were when the photo was taken.

Once you’ve geocoded your photographs, you can either generate a Google Map that shows where you travelled, and adds a flag for each image you took, or you can output to a Google Earth kml file, which does the same in the Google Earth client.

A couple of examples can be seen here (Google Maps) and here (Google Earth).

If you do a lot of traveling, and use a GPS, then this software is definitely worth a look, and at $39 its not going to break the bank.

I managed to get a lift home tonight, and took the scenic route home from where I was dropped off, which takes me along a stretch of the River Kennett.

I was very pleased to see that the Sand Martins have returned and were investigating the pipes in the riverbank that they build their nests in. I also noticed that there were a few Mayflies about, so hopefully I’ll be able to get some photographs at the weekend.

I was very surprised this morning, as whilst walking through the churchyard on my way to the train station, I saw a Club-Tailed Dragonfly in the middle of the path.

I managed to pick it up without too much trouble, as it was still in the shade, and the temperature was rather low, and so left it clinging to the side of the church in the sunshine to warm up.

As per usual, Murphy’s law dictated that I didn’t have my camera with me.