Winter has arrived. sort of

The temperature has dropped below 0 c today. First time this year, and the forecast is for a cold spell down to - 4 during the next few days, and -10 for the next few nights. No snow yet, so it's just cold and dark. One of the things that we had planned to do before the winter was replace the air conditioning unit in our house. The original (and not the best) was the same age as the house (27) and had been 'improved' by the previous owner. (A plastic coke bottle for waste water collection, resting on a heat exchanger surrounded by tatty wiring, and best of all, an old radiator thermostat connected in an attempt to regulate the temperature). The contractor we asked way back in August said he'd do it in September, but nothing happened, so a couple of weeks ago, my dear wife phoned him and said sweetly and politely 'If you've got so much work to do, then perhaps it's better we find another contractor'. Strangely enough, he was just on the verge of phoning us, and just happened to have time the following week to send the boys round to do it. So we now have a brand spanking new unit, with all sorts of clever features: a weekly timer, temperature & humidity monitors inside and out, the ability to turn the normally under pressure (relative to outside) to over pressure, if you want to light a fire, and it said somewhere in the instruction manual something about taking the dog for a walk... dunno, maybe I read it wrong. In any case, we don't have a dog. BUT IT DOESN'T WORK! We have been getting a smell of soot and chimney smoke since it was installed, it won't work above the minimum and when we phoned the nice man, first he said that we'd need to reset it ourselves, then mentioned something about the incoming water being too hot, so we'd need to call a plumber. Call we did, and he told us that the thermostat inside the machine to control the water temp wasn't connected. So we called the contractor back, and he came round, agreed there was a strong smell of soot (We haven't lit the fire since it was installed), took all sorts of measurements and then realised that there was a large hole above the machine where the incoming cold air pipe was supposed to be connected. So the Machine was basically trying to balance the pressure by recycling the air in the house, thereby creating even more under pressure, and sucking air in from anywhere it could, ie. the chimney. Ho hum. They'll be around to fix it. The other thing he said was that the difference between the air going into the house and the air being taken out of the house was lager than it should be (Even considering gaping holes above said machine), ie. there is leakage somewhere. As we have been using the original trunking, we thought for a while, and remembered that the previous owner had pointed to two points on the wall, and mentioned that there were two vents which he had 'covered up because they were ugly'. Having seen his attempts within the machine, and the plastic bag tiling on the roof, we have located said vents, and will tomorrow try to see whether they are covered or are simply air conditioning the space between the walls!