Thermal store - dangerous

[Dannypipe]

I just finished writing up a four page report on a thermal store I was called out to on Friday. The lower immersion heater was rigged up to a timer as there was no available white meter (economy 7 ect).

The timer is a Nobo 500, which is transmited to via RF from the consumer unit. I opened it up to check it after finding many other electrical problems and discovered the cables had melted insulation inside. I mean there was litterly none left.

Phoned manufacturer and confirmed my suspicions. The switch is designed to cope with a 2KW load and not 3.

This is on a rather swanky apartment block in London built 6 years ago, and they're all apparently wired up the same.

What a can of worms.

So look out for this chaps. There where other electrical problems in the property. Continuety between neutral and earth even when the double pole switch was off. Failed thermal cut out on one of the immersions and failure of the sensor pockets with water ingress. All in all, glad its not my place.

 

[Gray0689]

Sometimes money don't buy quality

 

[Dannypipe]

True but my flabber was truelly garsted mate. Kind of wish I hadn't discovered it!

 

[Gray0689]

True but my flabber was truelly garsted mate. Kind of wish I hadn't discovered it!

Your what lol

 

[Dannypipe]

My flabbergast, was garsted, something like that!

Anyway, just thought I'd flag it up for any of the guys on here who work with electrics, especially immersions, which lets face it, is most plumbers. It would have been easy to have just changed the immersion heater and walk away...hang on that's what I should have done!

 

[tamz]

Make sure you enclose a suitable bill with the report

 

[Bernie2]

Ohh! No!

I once worked for a company that a social HA maintenance division used as a fault finder. It worked a bit like this:

The HA's new build division would get houses built out of their budget and after 12 months hand them over to the maintenance division to take onto their budget.
The HA politics worked out that if anything was intrinsically wrong with the new houses being handed over the maintenance division would have to pick up the bills.

The fighting was horrendous and being the firm that was required to go in and do the first gas service before the maintenance division took the houses over, we sometimes found ourselves in some awkward spots..

Poor old Corgi must have got fed up being asked to sort out disputes, between our company and the new build company.

I was more like a lawyer not a gas fitter, having to prove everything through regulation, by laws, BS, BR, manufacturers instructions and so on. It was hard go and mostly about grey area problems.

The stress was nearly unbearable and we never got paid for it, the HA I was told expected it for free as part of our service. So you could spend hours sorting it out and the company only get paid for the likes of a service.

So watch what is going on around you and decline if you think its going to lead to trouble.

But then we could not refuse the HA was our main customer.

 

[Dannypipe]

Cheers for the heads up Bernie.

It is a can of worms. I've spoken to another engineer who had a maintanence contract on the building and he said in one year, 12 of this RF switches blew. I guess my estimate of how many flats was concervative. It's more like a couple of hundred. All with the same time bomb waiting to happen.

I'm the first one to realise the switch is not fit for purpose, or maybe not. I'm the first one who's pointed it out.

 

[Centralheatking]

Issues such as this are very important and the way the forum works this info will be lost eventually because of new posts.

Would it be possible that the moderators could pick issues like this out and leave them on a notice board for longer than
a normal discussion thread ? In this way infrequent visitors could see this type of post.

centralheatking

 

[PlumbBobBob]

good idea

 

[Dannypipe]

Ok, well as an update. The Thermal Store is a Gledhill, Pulsa Coil 2000. The properties are in Altima Court, East Dulwich Road, London. The engineer I spoke to reckons these timers have been used by many of the big property developers. I.e Wimpy ect. They're rated for 2KW and work on a radio frequency sent from the consumer unit.

It would have been easy to miss, but I'm fairly thorough when I check electrics on an installation, and I was getting some odd results so I investigated more. Glad I did.

If you are in a similar line of work to me, then I would imagine there is a good chance you will run into this. The engineer I informed about the issue said, 'ah it makes sense why they always blow now'...and he intends to point it out to his customers when he comes across it in the future.

If you don't generally work on heating/DHW then this will mean nothing to you. But I thought it was serious enough to point it out.

 

[NYC123]

I live in a development (100+ apartments) that have a Nobo heating system running a Gledhill Pulsacoil (A Class) water heater and are currently experiencing a lack of hot water (very irregular water heating, some days can not get 2 short showers out of it - slowly goes luke warm. Need to press the boost button every day, occasionally makes very loud noise, as if warming up - but still no hot water. no flashing lights and top box is full).

Have also read on another forum about the difference in receivers - is there a solution for the issue in this thread?
And, is it really that dangerous?, as if so I would like to get my Management Agency involved and possibly the developer.

Any further information would be appreciated.