Another liability question.

[WaterTight]

Which I again expect the answer is that it's not your problem

Job to change a rad, say.

If after changing the rad, topping up the pressure and going to check if any rads need bleeding now you find a rad that is unbleedable due to duff bleed screw and so may now may be cold at the top/not getting hot at all due to air you can't fully remove that may not have been there before you changed the rad would you consider yourself liable for not having warned the customer about this possibility before/checking the rads could all be bled? Or is it just one of those things and the customer's problem (which you can help with by changing the rad for more money should they wish...)

Thanks
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[old rad, not with changeable bleed valve]

 

[ShaunCorbs]

Customers problem would of told them before draining down though

 

[centralheatking]

Trusting the customer can be tricky. So an examination of a system before working on it
inc. running it up to heat etc. is the best way and avoids getting left holding the baby.
I suspect your customer knows make sure you look at their face when you mention it,
any way turn valves off, nice towel and washing up bowl and replace the bleed.
centralheatking

 

[Stigster]

When I was working in customer's houses as an apprentice I had to learn to predict the pitfalls after I was caught out a few times.

Early on just after I'd done my OFTEC I have serviced an oil boiler and then had it fail to start afterwards. I had made the ridiculously rookie mistake of not firing up and also checking combustion before I started working on it. I never did that again. I only put one hour on my timesheet because I lost time fault finding what was really a breakdown and didn't feel I could charge for my mistake. I should have been able to tell the customer it was not a service it needed.

I replaced a pedestal basin in a bedroom with a mirror bottom edge against the back edge of the sink. It had been there since the late 60s and the mirror that was stuck to the sink broke when I tried to separate them. I told the customer and went and bought them a new mirror out of my own pocket.

I've had a couple of other things like that. Forgot to switch off an immersion when I drained down a cylinder (all done that haven't we?) so I had to go get another one. Again I paid for it. Anything below insurance excess I was prepared to pay for (I was on the company's insurance). It made me a very careful and cautious person indeed.

Watertight, I think your case is different though. In totally normal operation the bleed vent failed. You couldn't have predicted that or done anything differently. The only thing is not warning the customer first and I don't think I would have either. In future I will if I have the chance.

I think you could pitch it to the customer as "failed during normal and required operation" or the same but maybe sound less robotic that that but I hope you get my meaning. It sounds a lot better than "It broke" or worse "I broke it."

 

[SimonG]

Definitely not your fault.

If you were going to advise a customer of all potential issues before carrying out works you would be handing over something as thick as the encyclopedia britannica.

 

[WaterTight]

Thanks all.


..............

 

[Ric2013]

The one I had was a Glow-worm poo xi (or something) boiler!

Turned it off to do some work, then it wouldn't switch back on. Turned out the rotary switch was a mechanism for actuating a sliding switch that had come loose, not due to any hamfistedness on my part, but simply because it was cheap and nasty. Reassembled the switch and was happily lagging the pipe and then the boiler went into error mode.

Luckily it was a friend's house I was working on and a local Gas Installer had a look, noted the heat exhanger was starting to deform and pronounced 'these don't like being turned off and on, but it's starting to leak anyway'.

The boiler had never been serviced since installed and my friend took the line that if it hadn't broken the day I was working on it it probably would have broken the day after. Which was probably the case, but I felt pretty awkward at the time. Had it not been a friend's boiler, then it might have proved acrymonious.

 

[WaterTight]

Averaged out over many many jobs: Which is more likely to cause problems once you're ready to turn the heating back on a test things are getting hot:

For this example let's say the only work done is letting the pressure drop to zero and then topping up after changing a rad or rad valve but not draining off more than bucket say, working on one valve at a time, maintaining an air lock.

a) Turning power off to boiler
b) Turning heating off at programmer but leaving power to boiler on

In my experience it seems more likely that b) will get you an error code and require topping up/resetting to get rid of it whereas a) may be by the book but seems more likely to interupt comms between the boiler and heating controls/receivers etc and/or bring problems to light that may have been lurking beneath the surface

Is this just me being paranoid based on some bad luck? As I am not gas safe and don't deal with heating system issue beyond rad changes my perspective on "problems" is likely to be different to others