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Discuss Help - Engineer caused boiler to fail after 'repair' liability? in the Plumbing Forum | Plumbing Advice area at PlumbersForums.net

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Hello there,

I have quite a story and a looking for some advice here.

On Thursday during the cold snap our hot water stopped working (in the sense of not water at all coming out of the taps). The central heating was working fine. As I have two newborns and having encountered this for the very first time in my life I called a plumber which number was given to me by a friend.

He attended my House at 21:30h in the evening. He wasn't sure what the issue was and was starting to open the boiler and work on various things in the boiler. He soaked about 7 large towels with water when trying to release the water from the system (again as a layman I didn't know any better) When doing so water also got into the electronics board and the display, so the display does not give any information anymore what the boiler is doing.

He then got a lot of debris out of the system which seems to be coming from the radiators. At the end for a 3h work, he was not able to get the boiler going again. Subsequently leaving me with no hot water and no heating.

On Friday morning I called out another gas engineer who told me that the guy has worked on the central heating part and not the hot water parts of the combi boiler and that most likely he has stirred up some issues that are now causing the system to fail. He also told me that there shouldn't be a flood of water in boiler when releasing it from the system and what I described to him sounded to him like an 'incorrect way of emptying out the system to look at the pump'.

To cut a long story short, it now looks like the entire boiler needs replacing plus a power flush to get the debris out of the system. I understand that the boiler in the house (we only bought it in the summer and have been told the service isn't due until 2023), was apparently full of stuff that shouldn't be in the boiler. But before the guy attended it was working totally fine and in hindsight he should have not done anything to the boiler.

The end result is that I had to move out of our home with 2 new born babies (3 months old), probably need paid accommodation for the christmas period, and looking at replacement boiler incl. fitting which will be somewhere in the region of £1,500- £2,500. And it all feels like it's only happened because the first engineer didn't know what he was doing and instead of saying so, touched things he shouldn't have. Causing the situation.

Is there any way I can get him to pay the costs or at least parts? I appreciate some perspectives.
 
Presuming he was gas safe registered, insured and is a reputable engineer, you should both be able to discuss the matter. Have you tried to discuss it?

It is difficult to comment on things like this. We do not know what he actually did inside the boiler or why. It would be good if you could speak to him face to face and point out your current situation/position including the financial problems and inconvenience caused and ask him to explain why you are where you are. If you remain calm and take notes or ask him to write down the explanation for you (brief report), I would hope he might offer to help you out of the mess you seem to be in. If you are face to face but calm and inquiring there shouldn't be any reason why he cannot explain what happened in a way that you understand.

Start there is my advice.
 
Yeah I just spoke to him.

He said he feels vey sorry and offered to pass over his pubic liability details. So, I guess whatever needs doing at least I'll be ale to recoup the costs.
 
So the plumber was there from 21:30 until 00:30 and couldn't get the boiler working.

I feel sorry for you on numeros fronts.
  • the current situation you are in with accommodation.
  • the time of year.

Try to get the guy to explain what he did in a email and processes he took.
Keep all receipts for you expenses while living away from home.

You will have to attempt to recover costs from him in the future.
I doubt he will dig into his pockets to pay you out for all your incurred costs
 

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