Heating Engineer in Georgeham, North Devon

Georgeham is a mile inland from Croyde, and it's where Henry Williamson lived and wrote Tarka the Otter. That isn't a marketing line: this business is named after the same river country, and the village that produced the book happens to be on my regular round. It's a nice coincidence and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

The village itself is thatch and cob at its core, with newer housing around the edges and a fair number of properties let out or used as second homes. Cob and thatch bring their own considerations: solid walls that hold the cold, restricted flue routes, and rooms that are harder to heat evenly than anything on a modern estate. Radiator sizing and system balancing matter far more here than they do in a 1990s box, and a system that's never been balanced properly will always have one room nobody can warm up.

Check the fuel before you call. Parts of the parish are off the mains gas network. I work on mains gas only, so if there's a tank in the garden it's LPG or oil, and you'll need an engineer registered for that instead.

I'm George Lane, Gas Safe registered. Georgeham is about 21 miles by road from South Molton, and I cover it with Croyde and Braunton.

You'll get an answer. Ring or message during the working day and you'll hear back the same day; evenings and weekends, it'll be the next working day. And if it isn't a job for me, I'll tell you that and point you at someone who can help, rather than going quiet on you.

When you book, I'll confirm it and give you a two-hour window rather than a whole day sat at home waiting. On the morning you get a text with a tracking link, so you can see where I've got to instead of wondering. Traffic and the job before yours are real, so it's a window rather than a promise to the minute, but if it slips you'll hear it from me first.