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Discuss Unvented Cylinder Gushing Water from Relief Valve? in the UK Plumbing Forum | Plumbing Advice area at PlumbersForums.net

G M

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Hi folks,

I hope someone can help me. This morning we noticed water leaking under the hot water cylinder in hotpress room. On closer inspection, the water was just gushing on to the floor and it was only by chance we noticed it. We turned off the heating system and spent the morning emptying buckets of water because we couldn't get it to stop. Eventually we decided to switch the hot taps on to drain the hot water, which did finally work. We didn't think of this for a few hours though!

Within 10 minutes or so of spotting this problem, we contacted our insurance company who we have emergency heating cover with. They booked an engineer to attend and investigate. They engineer came out about 5 hours later when the water gushing had stopped (because we drained the hot water supply with the taps on). He said that one of the valves was stiff or something in one of the exansion vessels, took a pump to it and said that was it sorted. He couldn't have been here 10 minutes. I thought great, we can switch the heat on again. He said it was from the pressure relief valve I think, which is supposed to run outside. Ours just runs direct on to the floor! We got a whole new heating system installed about 5 years ago and this is the way they left it. Not good! I told him I would get this sorted ASAP. I know next to nothing about home heating systems as I'm sure you can guess.

I switched the heat on and within about 30 minutes, the exact same problem happened again. Water gushing all over the floor. So again, we had to turn the hot taps on and drain the cylinder. I contacted the emergency heating company again and they said they would get someone back out. They rang me about an hour later and told me that I need to get my cylinder serviced and run the pipe outside and there's nothing more they can do. Somewhat annoying that they just washed their hands of it like that. They never asked me once when booking the call if the cylinder was serviced. Just the boiler, which I thought covered the home heating service but it seems not!

Is there something I can do for a quick fix until I can get somoene out to look at it properly? It seems that maybe the water is overheating which is causing the relief valve to open. Is there an easily adjustable thermostat on the cylinder? It is a Warmflow INDIRECT Unvented Stainless Steel Hot Water Cylinder if that's any use. Just trying to get it going at least until I get it properly check. Sorry for the long post and thank you!
 
Nope sorry they need servicing yearly so should of been done but anyone touching the cylinder needs to be g3 qualified
 
Any pictures of the cylinder install ? The expansion and temperature relief valves should be piped via suitability sized pipework and then to a drain point to avoid this unfortunate situation, this fault can be caused by various failures of components connected to the cylinder and or overheating ? any good engineer should carry out tests to prove a repair has solved the problem before leaving, if there's a danger of flood or scalding then this should be left in a safe manner . A G3 engineer and parts are likely to be needed to resolve this problem . Kop
 

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