DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD

Bad Central Heating (Swines) ‘Engineers’

I spotted these flues next door to a property we were visiting to finalise a full kitchen refurbishment for early in the New Year. As I walked by several neighbouring properties I noticed that most of the boilers had been upgraded from older floor mounted balanced flue boilers to condensing room sealed boilers. Interestingly the flues all appeared to be poking out above, beside or below openings (windows, doors, air bricks) in the fabric of the building. In English that means that the products of combustion (which includes carbon monoxide and other nasty toxic chemicals)  can re-enter the living space where humans (who require oxygen) can breath them in.

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While I was reviewing these pictures I recalled another property that we visited last year that had a similar issue. So on my departure from the kitchen work I went for a small walk and found twelve more situations that included everything from flues poking out from directly beneath a window, some that are too close to air bricks and lots that are improperly hooked up for the condensation drainage.

I’d really like to say that installing a boiler isn’t rocket science but it’s not far off. The vast majority of people including many plumbers and builders that I’ve met seem to think that installing a boiler into a property is like hanging a picture. Find the easiest location that the homeowner likes, drill a few of holes, screw up a bracket, core out a hole for the flue and you’re on your way. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. Working out where to mount a boiler and just as importantly what type of a boiler (combination, system, conventional) is required has more to do with physics than aesthetics. There is nothing more dishonest than allowing an uneducated homeowner to make a decision that is unsafe, uneconomical or unworkable. Lots of UN words here.

Having repaired the damage caused by many poor installations in the past I can already guess what happened with most of the boilers in our pictures. The old boiler was floor mounted and built with some sort of covering or cabinet so that it didn’t look too intrusive. When it came time to change the boiler or kitchen a fatal decision was made. Install the new wall mounted boiler up higher so it can be hidden by an upper cupboard or lined up with the cupboards. Not always a sound idea and there are ways around that such as plume management kits. Tye outcome of the poor decision making process sows in our pictures. The first flue comes out directly underneath a window, an openable window,  and contravenes the gas regulations. The property next door has the flue mounted up REALLY high. Looks better until you look up underneath of the concrete lintel which hangs down about a foot and thus creates a nice dead spot where the flue gases can lazily hang about giving them enough time to be sucked back into the air brick just above the flue as seen in the final snap. As a reference here is another shot that we spotted last year on the next street over.

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The original floor mounted boilers were what is called a balanced flue boiler. The big square flue brings in fresh air from the outside (the outside ring of the flue) and then once the oxygen from that air is used to aid in the combustion of the gas the exhaust is sent out through the same flue (the inside ring of the flue). The regulation BS5440-2000 (amended) state that the the flue should be a minimum of 300mm below the window or air brick for a boiler with a net heat input of 14 to 70kW. In lay terms it means that all three of the boilers pictured here too close to windows and air bricks. Look for option ‘A’ on our house diagram and then match that up with the terminal location ‘A’ in the chart.

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