S
Sol
Hi and thanks in advance for any advice
It’s a little long as quite simply I need to be sure whether I can get a free repair as it’ll be after winter before I can afford a repair myself, so I’ve included everything that I can think of to hopefully get the correct advice.
I had a Water Metre Fitted yesterday by Anglian Water and after they left my boiler was leaking? now I guess all they did is stop the water flow, fit the meter and start the flow again but it just seems so much of a coincidence that the boiler has been installed about 3 to 4 years and is leaking for the very first time within the hour of them leaving? It was possibly dripping right away as there was a fair amount of water on the work top and so it had been dripping a while, I noticed around an hour after they had gone so I put a bowl under it and turned it off, the drip is very slow if at all now and the total amount must have been around a cup to a cup and a half of water, so not a great deal.
I’ll just go ahead and explain the best way I can as I don’t know the technical names for various parts of a boiler.
It was leaking from a screw which goes up into the bottom of the robust steel case which is the bottom of the chamber where the boilers flames can be seen through the little window.
There are a couple of points to note, the first is that the boiler didn’t have its case on as I had some plastering done a few weeks ago and I hadn’t got around to doing it, also the boiler had gone out the night before and always does at this time of year though once reignited it can last months.
The boiler is a Ravenheat (The Silver Star) bought from B&Q and although it is 3 to 4 years old it has had very little use with me living alone.
The boiler has always lost pressure and I haven’t been able to locate a leak, I have looked in the most obvious places but It would be a massive job getting the floorboards up in my house as the previous owner has nailed additional boards on top of them plus a thousand or so newspapers for insulation purposes I guess?.
Now here’s the crunch, when the plumbers fitted it they showed me how to re-pressurise it and I have since thought that maybe they knew there was a problem and that I’d have to use that technique from time to time, they left the flexi pipe attached which I have since been told should not have been left on? They told me to turn the two levers to increase pressure and I remember them saying that 4 is the maxuimum though I normally leave it at 2, it stops working once it drops between 0.5 and 1 though It normally takes a while and so I would notice and top it up, something I have had to do around every two to three months though at this time of year (the colder months) it seems to have all sorts of problems, I guess the pressure goes down much faster when the central heating is in use as opposed to the occasional shower.
Last year the main fuse kept blowing when the central heating was used but eventually it settled and was fine, normally I just have problems with air flow in the odd radiator which bleeding solves but the last couple of years they have been much better but the constant loss of pressure is something I have had to live with, how often should the average boiler need re-pressurising?.
I have had a plumber out once to fit my fire and I asked then about the loss of pressure but he didn’t give me any meaningful information as to why it would lose pressure if I couldn’t see a leak.
So as it stands I have a reasonably new boiler that seems to be leaking when turned on, leaving me with no boiler through the cold months and unfortunately it could be a long while before I can afford to fix or replace it if it comes to that (hope not), I can’t even afford a plumber to assess it at the minute with Christmas being within a week.
I have spoken to Anglian Water and they offered to send a plumber out to assess whether they have caused the damage or not but after promising to call back twice the contractors have left me waiting and are now apparently coming tomorrow, I’m just worried that they’ll blame that flexi pipe or something else, I’m no plumber but the coincidence is pretty big as the leak developed so close to them fitting the metre which is underground out the back door about 5 metres from the boiler but then I can’t see how what they did would cause a leak when they didn’t touch the boiler, I’d guess that the problem is pressure related and had something to do with the meter being fitted but is it really their fault?
I guess the main questions I need answering are
1, can the process of fitting a water meter affect the pressure (a) when the boiler is turned on (b) when the boiler has blown out.
2, could the stop of water flow have had an effect on the pressure, I ran the cold tap as they asked me to in their words “to get rid of any s**t in the system” It spluttered and he just said “its clearing the air out”, when they had gone I ran the hot tap and though the cold tap was constant switching over to the hot it immediately started spluttering so I turned it off and forgot about it until I found the leak an hour later?
3, whats the deal with the flexi pipe and could that affect a claim, I mean the original plumber who I don’t believe is trading anymore led me to believe it was quite normal to have that pipe attached and even so, something caused the leak that morning so I doubt that this pipe could have contributed to it, could it?
Initially I thought how could they have caused it but the lady on the phone didn't seem at all surprised when I told her and the coincidence is just too big to ignore.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and I appreciate your input.
It’s a little long as quite simply I need to be sure whether I can get a free repair as it’ll be after winter before I can afford a repair myself, so I’ve included everything that I can think of to hopefully get the correct advice.
I had a Water Metre Fitted yesterday by Anglian Water and after they left my boiler was leaking? now I guess all they did is stop the water flow, fit the meter and start the flow again but it just seems so much of a coincidence that the boiler has been installed about 3 to 4 years and is leaking for the very first time within the hour of them leaving? It was possibly dripping right away as there was a fair amount of water on the work top and so it had been dripping a while, I noticed around an hour after they had gone so I put a bowl under it and turned it off, the drip is very slow if at all now and the total amount must have been around a cup to a cup and a half of water, so not a great deal.
I’ll just go ahead and explain the best way I can as I don’t know the technical names for various parts of a boiler.
It was leaking from a screw which goes up into the bottom of the robust steel case which is the bottom of the chamber where the boilers flames can be seen through the little window.
There are a couple of points to note, the first is that the boiler didn’t have its case on as I had some plastering done a few weeks ago and I hadn’t got around to doing it, also the boiler had gone out the night before and always does at this time of year though once reignited it can last months.
The boiler is a Ravenheat (The Silver Star) bought from B&Q and although it is 3 to 4 years old it has had very little use with me living alone.
The boiler has always lost pressure and I haven’t been able to locate a leak, I have looked in the most obvious places but It would be a massive job getting the floorboards up in my house as the previous owner has nailed additional boards on top of them plus a thousand or so newspapers for insulation purposes I guess?.
Now here’s the crunch, when the plumbers fitted it they showed me how to re-pressurise it and I have since thought that maybe they knew there was a problem and that I’d have to use that technique from time to time, they left the flexi pipe attached which I have since been told should not have been left on? They told me to turn the two levers to increase pressure and I remember them saying that 4 is the maxuimum though I normally leave it at 2, it stops working once it drops between 0.5 and 1 though It normally takes a while and so I would notice and top it up, something I have had to do around every two to three months though at this time of year (the colder months) it seems to have all sorts of problems, I guess the pressure goes down much faster when the central heating is in use as opposed to the occasional shower.
Last year the main fuse kept blowing when the central heating was used but eventually it settled and was fine, normally I just have problems with air flow in the odd radiator which bleeding solves but the last couple of years they have been much better but the constant loss of pressure is something I have had to live with, how often should the average boiler need re-pressurising?.
I have had a plumber out once to fit my fire and I asked then about the loss of pressure but he didn’t give me any meaningful information as to why it would lose pressure if I couldn’t see a leak.
So as it stands I have a reasonably new boiler that seems to be leaking when turned on, leaving me with no boiler through the cold months and unfortunately it could be a long while before I can afford to fix or replace it if it comes to that (hope not), I can’t even afford a plumber to assess it at the minute with Christmas being within a week.
I have spoken to Anglian Water and they offered to send a plumber out to assess whether they have caused the damage or not but after promising to call back twice the contractors have left me waiting and are now apparently coming tomorrow, I’m just worried that they’ll blame that flexi pipe or something else, I’m no plumber but the coincidence is pretty big as the leak developed so close to them fitting the metre which is underground out the back door about 5 metres from the boiler but then I can’t see how what they did would cause a leak when they didn’t touch the boiler, I’d guess that the problem is pressure related and had something to do with the meter being fitted but is it really their fault?
I guess the main questions I need answering are
1, can the process of fitting a water meter affect the pressure (a) when the boiler is turned on (b) when the boiler has blown out.
2, could the stop of water flow have had an effect on the pressure, I ran the cold tap as they asked me to in their words “to get rid of any s**t in the system” It spluttered and he just said “its clearing the air out”, when they had gone I ran the hot tap and though the cold tap was constant switching over to the hot it immediately started spluttering so I turned it off and forgot about it until I found the leak an hour later?
3, whats the deal with the flexi pipe and could that affect a claim, I mean the original plumber who I don’t believe is trading anymore led me to believe it was quite normal to have that pipe attached and even so, something caused the leak that morning so I doubt that this pipe could have contributed to it, could it?
Initially I thought how could they have caused it but the lady on the phone didn't seem at all surprised when I told her and the coincidence is just too big to ignore.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and I appreciate your input.
Last edited by a moderator:
