DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD
Bad Central Heating Installers
Regulations broken: BS6798:2000

We’ve been hit by cold weather which again helps to highlight shoddy workmanship from many so called central heating engineers. A New Year and an old story. Boiler condensate drains installed haphazardly and well below the current building regulations and/or the manufacturers specifications are freezing up and causing boiler to drown in their own discharge. Why does this happen every year?

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The answer is lazy installers. There is NO other reason. And before anyone feels sympathy to these poor installers who couldn’t possibly have know that the weather would drop to minus twenty please keep in mind that the installation of a boiler and all of it’s ancillary connections is well covered under the building regulations of which we are all to follow. Some of us anyway! The pictures above tell the story of the pipework which is too small, not insulated, not properlt clipped and sagging and the glued pipe joints also leaked. So let’s start outside where we find a small bore 22.5mm pipe sticking out through the brick work. Keep in mind that the four inch thick brick will also be cooled to minus  nin e degrees celcius so as to help the water in the pipe work freeze. The small pipe can be seen to be stuck into the end of a 32mm pipe!?I think that was the eureka moment where the installer figured that for some reason the pipe woruld’t freeze if it went into a BIGGER pipe. Duh?!?!’

So we reo=move the cover from the leaking boiler and sure enough the water has backed up from the ice blocked ‘too small a diameter and stuck through the side of a frozen brick” discharge tube all the way throiugh the kitchen and up into the boiler. About 2.5 metres. We emptied the condensate siphon inside the boiler and replaced the case. Then we removed the plinth from the kitchen units where we could feel the cold air getting into the house from some loose floorboards. The condensate pipe was also running up instead of down because it wasn’t clipped properly so the pipe was holding water. The quick solution was to leave the plinth off so the pipe work could thaw and then next week we’ll re-lay the pipe work in the correct fashion: down hill and using 32mm to go through the wall and out to the discharge. The other alternative will be to tie into the inside pipe work from the existing basin or cloths washer.

Just remember that discharge pipe work from a boiler can carry Carbon Monoxide and there fore should always discharge after the waste trap so gas cannot come back up through the plug hole.

The following link ( click here ) bring up the description and visuals of the correct method for connecting condensation pipe work. In every installation manual I have ever viewed shows a very similar drawing and description. The regulations are covered ‘in-depth’ in the British Standard 6798:2000. It covers the type of pipe work, length of pipe work, insulating of pipe work and several methods for the safe discharge of the condensate from the property. If you follow the rules the boiler will work, your house won’t flood and you won’t poison yourself from escaping CO.

If your installer has made up his own rules because he was in a hurry, didn’t have the proper material so didn’t bother or was just plane ignorant of the rules the you could be in for a cold night when your boiler packs it in because the pipe work has frozen.

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