Workers' logic

It now looks like I won't be going to Finland this July. The workers will start fixing up the upper floor of the house and we can't leave them to work on their own.

The men are still working on the drencher (sprinkler) system that is installed in case of a fire. It's an automatic system that will sense fire and then go off to water the roof, but we can also set it on manually.

We have two emergency buttons to set the manual system on. The placing of the buttons is crucial, as you want them to be accessed easily in case of a fire. We asked to have one in the upstairs lobby and the other one by the front door. Both can be accessed easily and you pass them if you run out in the case of the fire.

The installers had another plan. As you go out of our back door you come into the area that will be our conservatory. You then turn right and go through a door to get into our laundry room. Inside the laundry room is a door to the toilet the workers use (household staff, the gardener etc.) The workmen suggested we'd put one of the emergency buttons in the toilet, behind the door so that you can only access the button if you go inside the toilet and close the door behind you. There would be no sense, whatsoever, to put one of the buttons there... except that it would have been the easiest for the workmen as regards their effort. I insisted that we would have the buttons where I chose they would go, not where they would be the easiest for them to fit.

The men then went upstairs and drilled a hole for the electric cord so that the button downstairs would be connected to the drencher system. The button was to go right next to the big green outside door in the entrance hall. The obvious place to get the cord through from upstairs is, naturally, right above the place where the button would go. I heard the drilling and went to have a look. The men had drilled a hole in the sitting room, about a half a metre from the wall between the sitting room and the entrance hall. They missed the correct spot by 2.5 metres. They planned to take the cord down to the floor and glue it down. The cord would travel winding next to the wall towards the centre of the room, turn 180 degrees and go back towards the outside wall, turn 90 degrees to travel along the outside wall, then go up, sideways and down to frame the big green outside door before reaching the button.

I asked the men to have another think and said the cord should come down right above the place where the button was. They worked another quarter of an hour and got it right.

There is no way we can leave the men to work here and go on holiday.