One of the nice things about working for yourself is that when you work for people you like the people they recommend you to also tend to be people you get on with, whereas the arseholes[1] you wish you'd stayed clear of in the first place don't pass you on to other arseholes.
"Tend to", note. In general. Not always.
A pleasant couple I've done a few bits of work for over the years asked me to call up a neighbour of theirs who was having trouble with her boiler. This was on a Saturday. On the phone the neighbour volunteered that it was "A Potterton" in that way that you just know they think they're pretty clued up not only to be able to tell a boiler from a hole in the ground but to give you that much information on it, and any attempt to get them to further identify it and maybe even press an overheat reset button or suchlike is going to be about as profitable as trying to pin a politician down to an election manifesto commitment. Since it was pretty Arctic at the time and I was already booked up for Monday I offered to go round on the Sunday to look at it. Spent about half an hour taking covers off and testing bits to verify what the problem seemed to be and what it would need to fix it and told her. At this point she mentions that By The Way she's already got an engineer coming round the next morning to see to it.
What the ....?!!!
I suppose I should have charged her an arm and a leg for my time but I didn't even do that. They'll throw me out of the Federation of Rogue Traders if they find out. To be honest I just wanted out of there. I mean it wasn't just that the boiler was down in the basement (a big basement which seemed to go on round twists and turns forever) and she had a touch of the Kathy Bates about her; she even asked as I was leaving if I was married, and wanted to get married again. I was glad to be out in the fresh air ...
And then a couple of days later she phones up - in the middle of the evening - to complain that the other installer fitted a new programmer and she can't work out how to use it. Er, aren't there instructions for it? Yes but because she's so exceptionally intelligent (at this point I lost track of how her family had conspired against her because of her near-genius level of intellect to deny her the education she needed, or something) ... well for some reason she couldn't work the thing and the guy who'd fitted it, his mobile was switched off, I can't imagine why. I don't know if she expected me to leap into my RogueMobile and go over and sort it out for her (probably for free) that instant if not sooner, but I did manage to convey that that wasn't going to happen, and lose her. For now at least.
Now how do you block numbers on this phone?
[1] It's not really fair to compare these sorts of people with the part of the body concerned with defecatory functions. An arsehole may not be everybody's idea of a pleasant organ but it does at least perform a useful function.
Now you see it ...
There's a Derren Brown mentalism piece in one of his TV shows where he gets into a taxi (along with his camera crew[1]) on the North side of the embankment across the river from the London Eye, rattles off some patter to the cabbie as they're getting in, and asks to be taken to the Eye. Then, despite the fact it's staring them all in the face just across the river the poor driver is humming and haaing "Oh I know it's around here somewhere, um, err ...." - completely unable to see - or register - it.
And Robert Pirsig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" talks about 'gumption traps', where you can't see the bleedin' obvious right in front of your nose.
So when you get asked to look at a tank in the attic that's overflowing the first thing you look at is the filling valve ('ballcock' to you civilians). And then you check it again, in case you missed something first time. Because 9 times out of 10 that's the problem. There are other mechanisms which - like Rare Diseases in medicine - are rare. In particular, in a conventional old-school British system with tanks (usually in the attic) for cold water storage and one for the central heating system, a leak within the hot water cylinder's heat exchanger coil can allow water from whichever tank has the higher water level to get through to the other one. But that's rare. Very rare.
There's also an interesting thing called 'pumping over' that can go on in central heating header tanks, involving water getting either expelled or sucked in to the system via the vent pipe (the pipe with the upside-down 'U'-shape with an open end over the tank) which results in the tank getting filled with hot water, clouds of mist filling the attic in cold weather and massive corrosion occurring in radiators and boiler over a period of months or a few years. So when you get called to look at an installation that has both of these symptoms the true Rogue Plumber will get distracted with the pumping-over problem, miss the obvious cause of the overflow and tell the customer he needs a new hot water cylinder.
And unless the customer has the nous to get a second opinion from another plumber who correctly diagnoses and fixes the problem our RP hero is set for his 15 minutes of fame and free advertising on Rogue Traders.
[1] and sound crew, lighting, make-up, key grip, mole grip, catering, fluffer, fluffer's mate, best boy and Ken Morse on Rostrum Camera, no doubt.
And Robert Pirsig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" talks about 'gumption traps', where you can't see the bleedin' obvious right in front of your nose.
So when you get asked to look at a tank in the attic that's overflowing the first thing you look at is the filling valve ('ballcock' to you civilians). And then you check it again, in case you missed something first time. Because 9 times out of 10 that's the problem. There are other mechanisms which - like Rare Diseases in medicine - are rare. In particular, in a conventional old-school British system with tanks (usually in the attic) for cold water storage and one for the central heating system, a leak within the hot water cylinder's heat exchanger coil can allow water from whichever tank has the higher water level to get through to the other one. But that's rare. Very rare.
There's also an interesting thing called 'pumping over' that can go on in central heating header tanks, involving water getting either expelled or sucked in to the system via the vent pipe (the pipe with the upside-down 'U'-shape with an open end over the tank) which results in the tank getting filled with hot water, clouds of mist filling the attic in cold weather and massive corrosion occurring in radiators and boiler over a period of months or a few years. So when you get called to look at an installation that has both of these symptoms the true Rogue Plumber will get distracted with the pumping-over problem, miss the obvious cause of the overflow and tell the customer he needs a new hot water cylinder.
And unless the customer has the nous to get a second opinion from another plumber who correctly diagnoses and fixes the problem our RP hero is set for his 15 minutes of fame and free advertising on Rogue Traders.
[1] and sound crew, lighting, make-up, key grip, mole grip, catering, fluffer, fluffer's mate, best boy and Ken Morse on Rostrum Camera, no doubt.
Any Luck?
... she asked, returning with her kids as I was packing up after a couple or 3 hours cleaning the soot off the heat exchanger of her Ideal Excrement boiler, resoldering the wires to the overheat thermostat where the heat blasting up outside the blocked heat-exchanger had melted the solder and cut out the thermocouple (mercifully locking out the boiler - which is why they had called me out) then smoke-bomb and spillage-testing it as I put it back together and fired it up (with the FGA measuring ambient CO levels next to it as I did so) and fitting a CO alarm to hopefully clue them in to problems if they manage to leave it unmaintained for long enough for it to soot up again.
"Luck?" I says, "yes, dahlin'[1] you could say so. Like: you're lucky to be alive. And even luckier your kids are, given that they're more susceptible to Carbon Monoxide, which your boiler must've been chucking out like it was going out of fashion."
1 The salutation recommended by the Charterted Institute of Rogue Plumbers in their Customer Relations training manual "Appropriate forms of address for female menbers of the public what are fit. And MILF"
"Luck?" I says, "yes, dahlin'[1] you could say so. Like: you're lucky to be alive. And even luckier your kids are, given that they're more susceptible to Carbon Monoxide, which your boiler must've been chucking out like it was going out of fashion."
1 The salutation recommended by the Charterted Institute of Rogue Plumbers in their Customer Relations training manual "Appropriate forms of address for female menbers of the public what are fit. And MILF"
Scaly Monsters
| If calling this blog Bad Plumbing isn't a blatant enough attempt at capitalising on Ben Goldacre's well-established and successful "Bad Science" brand to precipitate an attack of the lawyers, then trespassing on his turf with a health-related story must surely provoke the good doctor beyond endurance. |
This is limescale:
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| Lechuguilla Cave, New Mexico photograph by Derek Lee, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 |
No self-respecting cave should be without some, but you don't want it swilling around as white flakes in your kettle, clogging up your showerhead, destroying your electric shower or damaging your combi boiler. Though apart from that it probably doesn't do you any harm - and may even be good for your heart - though possibly not good for your skin.
These are scale inhibitors:
They come in a variety of technologies - magnetic, electromagnetic, electrolytic and phosphor-dosing - the plumbing-world equivalents of crystal healing, acupuncture, homeopathy and science-based medicine. In other words most of them may look and sound impressive but there's precious little evidence that they actually work, except for one type which does: phosphor dosing.
Here are some phosphor-dosing scale inhibitors:
These all have a container of "polyphosphate" material - as a powder, granules of various sizes or lumps the size of small marbles. Some of this material dissolves into the water as it passes and - through mechanisms which weren't part of the Chemistry syllabus when RP was at school - prevents the Calcium Bicarbonate in hard water from changing to Calcium Carbonate and precipitating out as Limescale when the water is heated. (Executive summary: it just works.)
These phosphor-dosing devices come in various shapes and sizes, at prices generally between £50 and £100.
And this is a typical water softener:
These work on a completely different principle to scale inhibitors, swapping the Calcium bit of Calcium Bicarbonate for Sodium. Sodium Bicarbonate ("bicarb" to you cooks) doesn't turn into solid clag when it's heated and even when it dries up on surfaces (such as the tiles around your shower, and on taps etc) it dissolves off again easily. But water softeners cost around £500, and you have to keep feeding them large bags of salt which can get expensive.
And this is NoCalc.
Technically it's a phosphate-dosing scale inhibitor: it adds a bit of polyphosphate to the water. However by a clever application of advanced marketing technology it has become a scale inhibitor. And costs £250.
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As we can see this device offers remarkable benefits:
And of course extending the life of one's dishwasher, washing machine and central heating boiler, reducing energy bills (by at least the £249.99 purchase cost of the NoCalc) and using less than a third of one's normal soap and cleaning products is not to be sniffed at either.
Sadly, however, the brilliant feat of literary engineering that has endowed this humble device with such unparalleled benefits for humankind fares badly when exposed to the agent known as ASA.
You're too stupid to understand this so just give us your money
Here's a piece of dead-tree-ware that came with an Amazon order:
Wow! look at that - flames, wires, complicated-looking machinery. Youstupid fuckers valued customers couldn't possibly understand what's going on here but our British Gas engineers can so if you don't want flames and electricity and for all you know exploding machinery all over your house you'd better give us your money. Now.
So, er, what exactly is going on here, I hear you not having the temerity to ask.
Well first off we have a boiler that appears to be a version of a Potterton "Profile" that's been installed in the World Through The Looking Glass, because ones in our world look like this:
(Note the big round grey knob is on the right hand side at the bottom.)
And in this Looking Glass World what is our highly skilled and intelligent engineer (not "male model", purleeeease!) actually doing? He appears to be using some sort of electrical meter to measure something - could be voltage, current, insulation or continuity - between a point on the metalwork of the boiler and somewhere we can't see, out of the picture. Given that boilers bring together a potentially-lethal combination of electricity and water, checking that the boiler is safely connected to electrical mains earth is a reasonable thing to do so let's say our engineer is checking earth continuity. Fairy nuff.
So what about the flames? Why would any engineer in their right mind be running the boiler with the covers off (having quite possibly had to jerry-rig a safety device to do so) and then doing a completely unrelated test? And why, if the boiler is running with such unhealthily-yellow flames rather than mostly blue flames indicating proper combustion, isn't he doing anything about that?!
Or could it be - perish the thought! - that the whole thing's been set up to look impressive to a lay public in order to baffle them with science (or, at least, technology) into thinking they couldn't understand something that's about as complicated as a washing machine - which I know you don't know how it works but you know it's not rocket-science - and just cough up a load of money to a mega corporation which has not always been noted for its ability to deliver what its advertisements promise.
Wow! look at that - flames, wires, complicated-looking machinery. You
So, er, what exactly is going on here, I hear you not having the temerity to ask.
Well first off we have a boiler that appears to be a version of a Potterton "Profile" that's been installed in the World Through The Looking Glass, because ones in our world look like this:
(Note the big round grey knob is on the right hand side at the bottom.)
And in this Looking Glass World what is our highly skilled and intelligent engineer (not "male model", purleeeease!) actually doing? He appears to be using some sort of electrical meter to measure something - could be voltage, current, insulation or continuity - between a point on the metalwork of the boiler and somewhere we can't see, out of the picture. Given that boilers bring together a potentially-lethal combination of electricity and water, checking that the boiler is safely connected to electrical mains earth is a reasonable thing to do so let's say our engineer is checking earth continuity. Fairy nuff.
So what about the flames? Why would any engineer in their right mind be running the boiler with the covers off (having quite possibly had to jerry-rig a safety device to do so) and then doing a completely unrelated test? And why, if the boiler is running with such unhealthily-yellow flames rather than mostly blue flames indicating proper combustion, isn't he doing anything about that?!
Or could it be - perish the thought! - that the whole thing's been set up to look impressive to a lay public in order to baffle them with science (or, at least, technology) into thinking they couldn't understand something that's about as complicated as a washing machine - which I know you don't know how it works but you know it's not rocket-science - and just cough up a load of money to a mega corporation which has not always been noted for its ability to deliver what its advertisements promise.
Zone what?
Yup, you saw it right: an electric shower isolation pull-switch inside the shower enclosure.
Extra BP points to the installer
- since it could just as easily have gone a few inches away safely on the outside of the enclosure
- for telling the
victimcustomer that he'd put it there deliberately so that the switch could be operated quickly in case of emergency. Such as the person in the shower being electrocuted by a spray-soaked pull-cord emanating from a condensation-filled switch, perhaps?
Megaflo? Schmegaflo!
Pay £1K-ish for an unvented cylinder?
And get qualified to install them safely and legally?
That's soooo for losers when all you need is a bog-standard vented cylinder.
OK, so you might have to be a bit careful what you set the pressure reducing valve to or it ends up like ...
... one wefucked made earlier.
So a cylinder got bent out of shape? Big deal.
Yup, big deal:
(From a MythBusters video which shows what happens when a cylinder designed to run at mains pressure has its various safety devices fail (or in this case, deliberately disabled).)
Hey MegaFlo (and other unvented cylinder) owners -
- have you had yours serviced recently?
And get qualified to install them safely and legally?
That's soooo for losers when all you need is a bog-standard vented cylinder.
OK, so you might have to be a bit careful what you set the pressure reducing valve to or it ends up like ...
... one we
So a cylinder got bent out of shape? Big deal.
Yup, big deal:
(From a MythBusters video which shows what happens when a cylinder designed to run at mains pressure has its various safety devices fail (or in this case, deliberately disabled).)
Hey MegaFlo (and other unvented cylinder) owners -
- have you had yours serviced recently?
Jackpot
If you're going to cock up a boiler installation then a condensing combi or system boiler gives you most scope to do so with a choice of flue, PRD and condensate waste to get wrong. Here's one that got all 3 wrong.
First off the flue joints (it was over 2m long using a couple of extensions) were taped over with gaffer tape. Bad sign. Or rather, the only joint visible was gaffer-taped: the rest of the flue was boxed-in with no access (contra section <mumble> of the GSIUR).
Ripping off the boxing revealed that the entire flue was supported only on the studwork, had no fall (in either direction) and was sagging in the middle. The half-gallon of water that drenched my lower anatomy when I pried apart a couple of sections told me why it was sagging: the air duct had filled up with water which was just sitting there with nowhere to go.
By comparison the condensate waste was a model installation.
OK, so the un-solvent-welded solvent-weld fittings did come apart if one touched them, and it did go, unsupported, into a hole bodged into the WC multiquick and sealed with silicone but it could have worked.
Kind of.
Just about.
But the piece de resistance had to be the PRD. Coming out at the right hand side of the boiler ...
... it turns left ...
... then goes right ...
... up a bit then down again ...
... opens up from 15 to 22mm for a horizontal run under the bath ...
... back into 15mm, does a sudden dogleg for no apparent reason and out through the external wall ...
... to where? There's no sign of pipe in the hole on the outside of the wall. Presumably if/when the pressure relief valve opens it discharges into the cavity!
Amazingly the gas pipework seems to be all OK - up to size, joints soldered etc. Maybe that bit was done by the organ grinder himself?
First off the flue joints (it was over 2m long using a couple of extensions) were taped over with gaffer tape. Bad sign. Or rather, the only joint visible was gaffer-taped: the rest of the flue was boxed-in with no access (contra section <mumble> of the GSIUR).Ripping off the boxing revealed that the entire flue was supported only on the studwork, had no fall (in either direction) and was sagging in the middle. The half-gallon of water that drenched my lower anatomy when I pried apart a couple of sections told me why it was sagging: the air duct had filled up with water which was just sitting there with nowhere to go.
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| Most of the deluge had gone by the time I'd got out of the way and got my camera out. |
OK, so the un-solvent-welded solvent-weld fittings did come apart if one touched them, and it did go, unsupported, into a hole bodged into the WC multiquick and sealed with silicone but it could have worked.
Kind of.
Just about.
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Amazingly the gas pipework seems to be all OK - up to size, joints soldered etc. Maybe that bit was done by the organ grinder himself?
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