📙 Part 2: Describe a useful object in your home that you cannot live without

This episode's vocabulary

Stuffed (adj.) - (of a person) having eaten enough or too much.

Boiler (noun) - a device that heats water, especially to provide heating and hot water in a house.

To act up (phrasal verb) - if a machine or part of the body acts up, it does not perform as well as it should.

Grossly (adverb) - extremely.

Plumbing (noun) - the water pipes and similar systems in a building.

Mould (noun) - a soft, green or grey growth that develops on old food or on objects that have been left for too long in warm, wet air.

Thermostat (noun) - a device that keeps a building, engine, etc. within a limited temperature range by automatically switching the supply of heat on and off.

Uninhabitable (adj.) - not habitable (= suitable to live in).

Horrendous (adj.) - extremely unpleasant or bad.

Questions and Answers

M: Rory, hello!

R: Hello! It's me.

M: Give us your story. Rory story.

R: Well, I think I would be pretty stuffed without my boiler, to be honest. Which I discovered recently after it was acting up. I'm going to grossly oversimplify this and just say a boiler is a machine you have in your home, which is responsible for keeping it heated. In many homes in my country it's connected to the plumbing system, which keeps the hot water hot, and the fluid in the radiators and the pipes warm. And without it, your home would freeze or mould might start growing over it, both of which are very serious health hazards. In some homes, it also keeps the shower water warm. But I have a separate electric shower system for this. It's not really something you can ever afford to have off since I live in a cooler country. And I use hot water to clean plates and cutlery. So I would say it's pretty much in constant use. But the peak times are probably at night, especially in the winter when the temperature drops. Oh, actually, thinking about it, it has to work to keep the cold at bay during the day as well. It's attached to a device called a thermostat which helps regulate the temperature. So if you turn it up, then it makes the temperature go up in the house. And if you turn it down, then the temperature will go down naturally. Don't ask me how any of that works, though. It's like magic. And I'm very grateful to the plumbers and the engineers who came around to my house to help keep it running, and who probably will keep it running in the future. If I didn't have this thing in my house, it would probably be completely uninhabitable to humans. You literally cannot live in a house in Scotland without one of these. Which I think is a different thing in many countries. Because heating is centrally controlled in a lot of countries that I've been to. One time last winter it stopped working and I almost bankrupted myself using electric heaters to try and stop the house from freezing. It was horrendous. I'm so glad it's something that doesn't happen very often.

M: Hey, and what would you do if it breaks down?

R: Well, I have boiler insurance now. So I think I would just call the insurance company and they would send someone to help me.