Any plumbers in da house? combi boiler question.

[hellkat]

Oh, sorry, just seen you had the plumber round.
Good luck.

hellkat
a bit trashed

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Not nearly as interesting in real life.

[it really is that quick]

check that any isolating valves on inlets or outlets are fully open and that they move freely. these will usually be either square nuts or have a slot for a flat screw driver.

find the cold water inlet and check if it has a strainer fitted (usually a fairly chuncky compression fitting with a part that can be unscrewed).

thats about all you can do with out taking great chunks of the boiler apart to find out whats stopping the water from flowing.

combis generally have 22mm pipes for gas, heating flow and return.

so avoid any of the bigger pipes. you will then have three 15mm pipes numbered in no particular order (all boilers are in a slightly different order)

1. a cold inlet
2. a hot outlet
3. a presure relife

all the best

rob
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not just any short of winnah... But a Sahf East Winnah

i dont look like your average hortifuckingculturist

[owdamer]

Latest news on my boiler problems.
Heating wasn't working last friday. Had hot water but rads were all cold.
Managed to get the plumber round. (same guy who fitted boiler 6 years ago.)
He said it was the pump, and fitted a new one. Still no heat tho.
After a bit of pissing about he got the rad nearest the boiler to come on, plus the bathroom one.
The bathroom one doesn't have a thermostat, i was told that any excess heat from the boiler goes to the bathroom one to prevent the boiler overheating.
Bedroom and downstairs rads were not working.
Plumber tells us that because our house water pressure is so low it will take a while for the sytem to pressurise and then it will be ok. He told us to leave the heating on & everything would settle down.
He then left saying we could pay him later.
Heating was left on full all night. Still nothing on saturday so we sent him a txt as we could only get his ansaphone. he sent us a txt back saying it was the divertor valve and he couldn't get one til monday.
Monday arrives. Been a very cold weekend!!.
Girlfriend was off on monday so she spent the day messing with rads. she turned em all off, then worked her way round the house turning the valve on and off and eventually got all the rads on.
house was now very hot, but if you turned the thermostat down a bit the rads just went cold.
Rad only seem to be working when on full, and even then the boiler is just heating them at random intervals rather than when the timer says. if you swith to on, rather than timer it still heat up when it feels like.
She spoke to plumber and he said the valve hadn't turned up so we didn't see him.
Tuesday. sent txt to plumber. he replied telling us valve would be delivered on wednesday.
Wednesday. sent txt asking if valve had arrived. Plumber replied, "they sent the wrong one. had to reorder".
Thursday. Nothing...........Girlfriend left message on his answerphone in the evening to ask him where we were upto. she was getting worried as the cold house was affecting her asthma.
Friday morning. Girlfriend rings up local plumbers merchants. They have valve in stock, £103+vat.
I sent txt to plumber telling him this. got reply saying if I went and got it then he could come and fit it in the afternoon.
really pissed off with plumber now, what happens if his diagnosis is wrong? I've paid out £120 for a valve that I dont need and I doubt the merchants would refund me.
I got intouch with another plumber, a guy I used to work for. he said that it sounded unlikely to be the divertor valve.
He agreed to call round take a look saturday mornin.
I've not bothered replying to first plumber, and he's not bothered trying to get in touch to see if I got the part.
Saturday morning. New plumber turns up. A very friendly Indian guy.
He has a look at our boiler and tells us that its been badly fitted.
There is a pressure release valve with a pipe that should be routed outside the house, but its just been left unconnected. if the pressure got to high the boiler would have just dumped its contents on the floor!!!!
He said the boiler should have been flushed with an anti corrosion agent when it was commisioned, and there should be a dated tag to let any other engineers know what was in the system.
All the pipes to our rads are plastic with quite a narrow bore.
These were no doubt fitted for ease. He said he used regular copper pipe.
To sum it all up, the Indian plumber said our plumber was a cowboy!
He's coming back on monday to sort the mess out hopefully.
Meantime plumber No1 can go to hell. I aint paying him for the pump. As far as i'm concerned he started the job, then failed to finish. I've got better things to do than constantly chase him down to finish the job. I've never even seen his corgi reg card so for all I know he's not even bloody qualified!!!
https://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d12/owdamer/other%20stuff/boiler.jpg

[Kwaks]

Report this guy to Corgi, looks like a total cowboy. Have a bit of trouble with my heating where the upstairs rads come on but downstairs dont.I found that if I switched of the hot water all the rads come on without problems,might be worth a shot.

[Ant]

[owdamer]

[michael j]

I've seen some dodgy work in my time but that looks attrocious!
I'd be very surprised if that plumber was Corgi regd. Make sure your new plumber gives it the once over, checking the flue,etc. You can check if an engineer is regd on the Corgi website.
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Ducati 996

[owdamer]

The red thing on the picture is a mop, not part of the tubing. The cover is off as the new plumber had just been looking at it. The hosepipe on the left hand side leads down to a bucket. it the valve does go then hopefully it wont dump its contents on the floor. Pipework is a bit rough tho.
The mains water used to go upto the watertank in the loft, so they ran a pipe from there back down to the water inlet, mean the water has to travel twice as far as it should before it reaches the boiler.
He's then run the hot water feed back up into the loft and down into the bathroom as there was already some pipework up there.
Boiler is in back bedroom by the way, not garage. ignore the finish on the walss, thats just me not being bothered to decorate the room. We only use it for starage. its full of tents, leathers, old pcs and tools.

Just looked on the corgi site and the plumber is on there. Got his home phone number as well. Dont think i'll bother to ring tho.

[Kwaks]

If he is on the corgi site get them to inspect the work,if he has screwed up they should get it rectified for you.

I know the corgi reg has nothing to do with the pipework Ant,but this guy fitted the boiler as well.

I would call the home number to check if it was still current,he may not have updated corgi on any changes.In YP also check in the CAS box held by corgi to see if he is listed there. Checking Yell.com will also be a quick way to see what his current business address is.

[owdamer]