He doesn't mention his evident talent for signwriting.
Or vehicle maintenance.
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:
 |
| 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.
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)