Oh, I feel your pain. Our cottage has a back boiler, and we'd never had one before so it didn't really register that the water was boiling in the tank until the day when, at 4am, the tank gave up the ghost and emptied itself over the living-room floor. Thank God it was on the ground floor. And that we have floorboards not carpets.

If there is so much as a gurgle now, we both leap for the nearest tap.

(And it's not as though I can even have a bath - there is a better than 50% chance that I'd end up in the living room. Our house, she is fragile...)