1st March....Handover!!!!!

Frank ( the german plumber/technician) took us through the technical bit of the handover last night. He explained the hot water coming out of the left tap and the cold out of the right tap. Well I followed it up to that point but when we descended to the hall and sat in front of the central heating programmer for 40 minutes....my eyes glazed over. Apparently you can programme your holidays into this piece of kit and it will switch everything off, or keep it running on low until you arrive at the airport on your return. It will probably book your holidays for you too!!!It will then fire everything up and make sure its warm when you come in through the front door. Marvellous!!!! It has an outside sensor to monitor the weather and to anticpate whether the boiler needs a boost to ensure the inside temperature is constant. Its very complicated and very impressive. I can now throw away those oil filled radiators and electric fan heaters..........well, maybe I'll keep a couple, just in case.
The basement houses the plant room, where I have spent many a happy hour trying to feed the water, electricity and BT cables through the ducts to the outside. Here lurks the Enterprise Galactica control room with boiler and associated technologies. Fortunately there's a manual (in English) telling you what to do and there was a great debate about where this special wooden Huf manual and holder should be placed in the room. I stepped back from this one, and left it for Pam to decide, after all she is probably the one who will be resetting timers, ambient temperatures and checking water pressures. If it goes over 8 bar pressure, run for your life, and there was one valve that Frank said 'DON'T TOUCH', but I now can't remember which one.

We signed the requisite documents saying we had read and understood everything even though we hadn't and I promised Frank I would take the manual home and study it sometime.
The handover the next day was a far less stressful affair. Rudiger ushered us through the rooms with Fred, the German chippy alongside. Rudiger stuck yellow tape where anything wasn't perfect and Fred was there with a selection of paints to address any tiny marks of imperfection. Well, we could only find four instances of minute damage and Fred appeared rather disappointed that he could do no more.
The windows sparkled like new, everything spotless and the carpets hoovered showing a uniform pattern where the machine had been.
At the end of our tour Rudiger appeared with a black holdall and in it was a selection of paints for exterior and interior, some special rawplugs for the basement area, a wax crayon for taking out scrapes on the black woodwork and a tool kit with the Huf Haus logo for any maintenance one might have to do. Another manual with instruction on the electronic blinds, tile and carpet maintenance etc etc. And another set of documents to sign and then....the handover of ten sets of keys!!!!!

OK, so we're on our own now!!!!! Later I spent a little time going through the kitchen unit delivery in readiness for our fitter arriving Monday. A bottle of bubbly arrived (thanks Julian) and we toasted the new house....(our other two offspring live abroad...Vanessa in France and James in Dusseldorf) and we saw the sun set from our vast lounge window.

Now we have kitchen fitting, lights,etc etc and the ground works.......