He says that he’ll be back shortly with the correct unit. He departs leaving the live cable ends laying on the floor with just the isolator switched off, takes the old immersion with him and then…just like that…he disappears.
So our flat owner has no hot water, no cold water, cannot turn the water back on because the cylinder has an opening in the side that used to contain the element which the electrician has taken away! We received the call on Saturday and were told the entire story which started earlier in the week. We couldn’t obtain a replacement immersion as our suppliers were already shut for the weekend but we promised to get on to it first thing Monday morning. We obtained the proper replacement part, again from our friends at MANCO and had the un-vented cylinder repaired and refilled in an hour. It’s not hard when you know what you’re doing.
So what went wrong with the electrician? Well, Mr. Electric, whom we checked out via his web site says he’s an electrician and heating specialist. He’s not CORGI or Gas Safe Registered that we could see and we could not find any sign that he has his un-vented cylinder ticket so probably wasn’t aware of what he was repairing and how to test it all when completed. Further to that he clearly wasn’t aware that the stainless steel tank required a different element than a copper cylinder.
So instead of him coming back, telling the flat owner that he couldn’t find a replacement part, putting the tank back together and then turning the water on this guy stopped played hide and seek, stopped answering his phone and vanished. We sorted it out instead. The good news, if there was any good news, for the client was that he didn’t pay the other bloke who spent two or three hours emptying the tank so we didn’t have to. We were in and out in an hour and were off to the repair the next job.
Always hire the right people the first time. And if you have an un-vented cylinder in your property (a lot of city centre flats do) then check to make sure the bloke that shows up is qualified. Un-vented cylinders are like VERY BIG pressure cookers. They are under pressure. They will explode if hooked up incorrectly! If your repairman is Gas Safe Registered (previously CORGI) then it WILL be marked on the back of his ID card just like our ID Cards. Don’t call an electrician to do a heating engineers work!