'Our hot water failed on a cold winter day'

Mike and Sarah Cole were faced with a chilly problem, but a call to British Gas soon put things right

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A freezing mid-December day is not when you want to discover you have no hot water, but that's what happened to Mike and Sarah Cole.

One of their two teenage children had had a shower that morning, but by the evening the hot taps were giving out nothing but cold water.

"I had a look at the boiler to see if I could fix it, but with no success," recalls Mike, 66. "It looked like it needed specialist attention."