You have opened window number 24!
The final window of WPJ Heating’s advent calendar is open. We want to thank all of our customers who have been with us this year, and all of you who have followed the advent calendar. We hope that you have enjoyed it as much as we have. This has been the first year that we have had an advent calendar and we plan on making it a tradition. Next year we’ll come back bigger and better with more giveaways.
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us at WPJ Heating!
You’ve opened Window 23!
Our advent calendar is nearly finished, we hope you’ve enjoyed all the goodies so far. Today, we’ve got 5 last minute hacks for the thrifty, DIY craft lover.
1.
Make artificial snow for your indoor decorations using stuff you can find at home. Click here for three quick eco friendly recipes you can make yourself at home.
2.
This helpful tip from tesco.com – use rosemary sprigs and cranberries to welcome your guests with gin and tonic.
3.
For added festive cheer, make candy bowls and placeholders out of… well candy.
These handy tips are from Princess Pinky Girl and Industrious Justice.
4.
Reuse your old tangled up fairy lights by putting them in a pot plant:
This tip was from Better Homes and Gardens.
5.
Jazz up old fairy lights using ping pong balls.
Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!
You’ve opened advent window 22!
Last week, we wrote about how to troubleshoot heating emergencies this Christmas and keep your energy bills down. Christmas is now just a heartbeat away and that means cooking, eating and of course, unwanted waste in your hitchen drains and sewage. Given all the enjoyment and fun that’s in store over the next few days, here’s how to get through it all without it getting ruined by a clogged drain.
First things first, a reminder to bleed your radiators before any guests arrive. You want to make sure your heating and hot water is in excellent working condition and the strain of extra people won’t cause it to breakdown.
Now for some rapid fire suggestions:
Give your bathroom a quick makeover by simply adding new accessories and employing these organisation tips.
With all the cooking you’ll be doing, make sure sure that fats, oils and scraps don’t from make their way down the kitchen sink. Make sure your sink has a catcher and before soaking your oven trays and casserole dishes make sure to wipe away the oil with a paper towel, or sprinkle some flour over the tray to soak up the oil. Then scrape the residue into the bin, not down the sink.
To save on energy bills, run your machine only on full loads, not just for a few items.
Ask your guests to stagger showers and to make sure hot water is available for everyone to shower in the mornings, run your dishwasher late at night so showers don’t lose pressure while it’s in use.
Unclog any blockages using an old hanger if you don’t have a plunger.
Keep a lit candle or diffuser on at all times in the loo. That turkey will be delicious, the whole house doesn’t need to be reminded twice!
Enjoy a plumbing emergency free Christmas!
You have opened window number 19!
We’re giving away a Joseph Joseph Three-Piece Steaming Pod Set!
We want to make sure that you have the perfect peas on your Christmas table, so make sure to sign up to win!
HOW TO WIN
Email zorana@wpjheating.co.uk with the following details:
– Your name
– Your phone number
– Your full address
The competition is open until 9am, Wednesday the 20th of December and the winner will be published on this page at 4pm on the same day.
*** THE WINNER IS ***
Catherine Carter
You have opened window number 18!
We’re giving away 2 Goose Feather Silver Piped Pillows!
(Value £45)
It’s almost time to lay your head down and rest, who doesn’t need a new soft pillow? Enter to win now!
HOW TO WIN
Email zorana@wpjheating.co.uk with the following details:
– Your name
– Your phone number
– Your full address
The competition is open until 9am, Tuesday the 19th of December and the winner will be published on this page at 4pm on the same day.
*** THE WINNER IS ***
Kristy Robinson
You have opened window number 17!
Today we’re sharing a yummy recipe for Swedish saffron buns, originally called Lussebullar – read our post on the Swedish tradition of Lucia here.
The following recipe gives one batch of 30-40 buns. You’ll need:
1 g saffron
200 ml sugar
2 tbsp rum or water
50 g fresh yeast
175 g butter (room temperature)
500 ml whole milk (room temperature)
½ tsp salt
800 g wheat flour
100 ml raisin
Flour for kneading
1 egg for brushing
INSTRUCTIONS
Crush the saffron in a mortar with 1 teaspoon of the sugar. Mix the saffron and sugar powder with the rum or the water. Let it soak for 30 minutes.
Cut the butter into squares
Crumb the fresh yeast and mix it with the milk, butter and the saffron liquid into a food processor or a bowl.
Add the rest of the sugar, salt and flour. Work the dough for 15 minutes in the machine or 20 minutes by hand. Let the dough rise for 1 hour.
Soak the raisins in some water for about 30 minutes, then remove the water.
After it’s risen, place the dough on a lightly floured worktop. Knead the dough lightly and cut and shape it into saffron buns, about 30-40. Add the raisins in the middle of the circles. Put baking paper on a tray and put the buns on it. Cover with a cloth and let it rise for 30 minutes.
Turn on the oven on 225°C.
Brush the buns with a whisked egg. Bake in the middle of the oven for 8-10 minutes. Let it cool on a oven rack under a cloth.
We hope you enjoy it!
Some of us believe that turning up the thermostat makes our homes heat up quicker and that the temperature dropping outside automatically means we should turn up the thermostat.
Most of us believe we know how to keep warm. Turn the thermostat up, draw the curtains and reach for a blanket. But a survey from the Energy Savings Trust showed that although 4 out of 5 British consumers believe they understand their heating controls, up to half of us misuse energy by simply turning up our thermostats when it’s cold outside. On day 16 of our advent calendar, we’re bringing you 16 tips on getting through the turkey, having family over, Christmas decorations and the *really* cold snap without throwing money at the wind too.
Keep your heating on. If you’re going away for Christmas, make sure your you keep your programmer/ timer on. Set it to come on less frequently than usual, but to come on. While you will have some energy costs, this will help you avoid the more expensive problem of frozen pipes when you get back. If you’re a landlord, make sure your tenants do the same.
Draught proof your windows and doors. It could save you about £35 over the year.
Don’t leave your devices on standby. More than 75% of us admit to leaving at least two of our devices on stand by regularly. Your set top box left on standby for 20 hours in the day can cost you £20 a year. This Christmas, turn your TV and games consoles off standby and you could save up to £30 a year. Particularly when you’ve got guests over, there’s no need for your tv to be left on as background noise when you’re not watching it.
Get your heating system checked before your guests arrive. Book a boiler check with your gas engineer to make sure everything’s in order before the festivities begin. The last thing you want is for us to get that long anticipated white Christmas while your home feels like an ice box.
Check the opening and closing times of your local gas engineer and plumber over the Christmas period. The last thing you want is to wake up over the holidays and face a heating emergency with no idea who to call. Incidentally, we’ve got some tips on how to troubleshoot heating emergencies if you find yourself stuck in a rut.
Get a plumber to do a winter check on your pipes. Again, make sure blockages are cleared, none of your pipes are frozen and there’s no chance of a plumbing emergency over the break.
Turn your thermostat down. It may sound like the opposite of what you should do, but it really won’t make a difference to how warm you feel. Dropping a degree or two on your thermostat could save you money this year.
Use LED Christmas lights. LED Christmas lights use up to 90% less energy than normal Christmas lights. If everyone in the UK used LED lights, collectively we could save up to £13 million during the twelve days of Christmas.
Or use solar powered fairy lights. They’re free to use, as they’re charged by the sun during the day.
Christmas is a good time to light candles. Create an atmospheric or victorian theme in your home by simply using candles instead of flicking the switch. Read our post on the origins of advent calendars or the Swedish tradition of Lucia to see how candles featured very heavily in Christmas traditions.
Wear that ugly jumper. Very simply, you won’t have to turn the thermostat up.
Use your tablet or phone instead of your laptop to power that Netflix binge you’ve been looking forward to. Tablets use 70% less energy than a laptop.
When cooking, make sure to cook with the lids on and use the right size pots for your hobs to avoid wasting energy.
Cook multiple things in the oven at once, to avoid having to turn the oven on multiple times during the day.
Over Christmas dinner, when everyone’s gathered together in the same room, it’s a great opportunity to turn the heating down, or even off. The shared body heat will keep everyone warm, and you can save money while you’re at it.
On the same note, have an engineer install thermostatic radiator valves in different rooms. This will allow you to control the temperature in rooms that no-one is in, or warm up bedrooms just before everyone goes to bed.
You’ve opened advent window 15!
Over the holidays, you might wake up one morning and find that your central heating has decided to have its own holiday. Not ideal. Especially over Christmas, when emergency plumbing and heating services may face high demand and so will be less available. So it’s important that you know how to trouble shoot minor issues yourself.
NB: If after following these steps, you notice that your boiler/radiators are still not working, call a qualified gas engineer. Everything in this guide can be done without needing tools, or having to open any part of your boiler other than accessing the controls. If you find that you need tools to access any part of your boiler, don’t touch it at all. Don’t try to fix your boiler yourself, it is dangerous and may be illegal to do so if you’re not a qualified gas engineer.
Here are some troubleshooting checks you can carry out yourself, safely:
Hit the reset button.
Did you have a power cut recently? Or fuse tripped on your main electricity? If you did, your boiler’s timer may simply have reset itself. All you need to do in this instance is re – programme your boiler again. Just to make sure set the timer to come on in the next 15 minutes and turn your thermostat all the way up to see if this generates any heat. If after that, it still doesn’t come on, move on to the next step.
Check your gas supply
The prospect of having no heating or hot water can sometimes make us panic. Most people would call a gas engineer out over minor issues that they could’ve resolved themselves with simple checks. The next step is to check that your gas supply is actually on. For modern homes, your gas isolation valve may be located outside, where your gas meter is. If you can’t find it there, check the cupboard under the stairs, under your kitchen sink or in the garage. If the handle is at 90 degrees to the vertical gas pipe, that means it’s off.
If that’s the case at this point, don’t touch anything. Call a gas engineer immediately. There is no reason why your gas will turn itself off and if you find the valve in the off position, there is usually a reason for it that you may be unaware of.
If it is on however, you can move on to the next step.
Check the pressure
Another simple reason your heating may have stopped working as normal is if the pressure is too low or too high. Your boiler will have it’s own specific instructions on how to check the pressure. If it’s at 0.5 bar, the pressure is too low and a water leak may have occurred. Above 2.5 bar means it’s too high and there is too much water in your system. There is a very easy fix and you can deal with this yourself.
To increase pressure:
You’ll notice a silver bendy pipe (called a filling loop) with two swing valves attached. Open one valve, then the other, this will increase the pressure, close the valves when the pressure reaches 1.5 bar.
To reduce pressure:
Simply bleed your radiators with a bleeding key to let water out of the system and therefore reduce the pressure in the system.
Call Live Plumber
If after taking these steps, your central heating or hot water is still not working, call our live plumber service. It makes it possible for you to call us via video chat and show us exactly what the issue is. This means that you get instant help, don’t need to book an appointment just to get a professional opinion and you avoid unnecessary charges.
Live plumber is usually open from 09.00 – 17.00 during our regular office hours, but over the holidays, we’ll be closed from the 23rd – 26th, and from the 30th December – 1st January 2018.
You have opened window number 14!
We’re giving away a Cooks Pro Diamond Kettle & Toaster!
(Value £100)
HOW TO WIN
Email zorana@wpjheating.co.uk with the following details:
– Your name
– Your phone number
– Your full address
The competition is open until 9am, Monday the 18th of December and the winner will be published on this page at 4pm on the same day.
*** THE WINNER IS ***
Anthony Cassidy
You have opened window number 13!
Today we’re sharing a beautiful Christmas tradition carried out in the cold and dark land of the Swedes. The 13th of December marks the Christian feast known as St Lucy’s Day, or as the Swedes simply call it; Lucia. St Lucy’s Day is celebrated most commonly in Scandinavia and in Italy, but here we’ll be focusing on the tradition of Lucia and the way it’s celebrated in Sweden.
Saint Lucy was a 3rd-century martyr under the Diocletianic Persecution who according to legend brought food and aid to Christians hiding in the catacombs. She used a candle-lit wreath to light her way through the catacombs and leave her hands free to carry as much food as possible. There are different versions of how the Swedish Lucia came to be, we won’t dwell too much on it, but it’s safe to say that it’s a mixture of folk belief, legend and historic facts.
The Swedish Lucia Tradition
Lucia is celebrated throughout Sweden and schools, companies and churches are visited by a Lucia parade (Luciatåg), much like the one in the video above. The members of the parade sing traditional Swedish Christmas songs as the music is a fundamental part of the tradition. In pre-schools and elementary schools children are engaged in creating Lucia parades and singing the Lucia songs.
An important part of the Lucia celebration are the nibbles served, what Swedes refer to as Lussefika. Traditionally Lussefika consists of Swedish saffron buns, gingerbread and of course Glögg, Swedish mulled wine, mandatorily served with raisins and peeled almonds.
Swedish Saffron Buns – Lussebullar
Where to see Lucia
You can see the Swedish Lucia in London usually from the beginning to the middle of December. The Swedish Church in London arranges several events over a 2 week period, these events are very popular and sell out months before the events.
If you’re interested in catching Lucia this year in London, there are still some tickets left for the Lucia Nights at the Asylum Chapel, tomorrow Thursday the 14th of December.
And if you can’t make that, we suggest that you at least have some Lussefika and Swedish saffron buns at Bageriet in Covent Garden.