Nothing is Easy
I guess there are two things that you can do on Easter weekend; either holidaying / visiting / socialising with family and friends, or DIY. This year, I DIYed.
Any readers who have visited our house will know it is a work in progress (I think it has been in progress for about 300 years now). The work is entering a new chapter, and the first paragraph of that chapter is a new boiler. The old one is in a part of the house we are going to demolish to make room for something better.
So this weekend I attempted a large amount of modification to the central heating system in order to accommodate this new boiler, and also to provide some pipework for the new sections of house we are planning to build. For one reason and another I wasn't actually installing the new boiler, that will be in a few weeks. So the old boiler remains connected, but valves have been installed so it can be removed without doing much work.
So I started this job on Saturday morning (Seiko was working Friday, so I took the kids socialising then). I had actually intended to do a bit of preparation on Friday (e.g. moving the furniture) and in fact the preparation took most of Saturday (clearing two rooms, lifting floorboards in four different places, a bit of joinery to support the new boiler, it all adds up). So not a great start, and in fact by close of play Saturday the central heating was still intact, since I'd found enough stuff to do without actually breaking it.
I got properly stuck in on Sunday, drained down large parts of the system and cut various bits of it up, joined them to other bits in new and interesting ways and built several new sections. This carried over into Monday and I was running out of time for the inevitable troubleshooting. So come 3 o'clock when I was ready to fill the system with water, I was a bit worried. If you count each connector as two chances to leak, and each 'T' in the system as three, I had over 80 chances of a leak.
Since I'd fitted so many valves to the system to make my life easier in future, Seiko and I went round opening each in turn and filling the system in sections in order that we wouldn't get all the leaks at once. Imagine our surprise and delight when we found that NOTHING leaked at all! This is unprecedented in the history of plumbing (well my plumbing anyway). In retrospect we should have seen it as a warning sign.
Lack of leaks with a cold fill is one thing, but you really want to check the joints with the system running hot, just to make sure. So I went to turn on the boiler (which hadn't been touched all weekend). Switched it on and 'click'. All mains power in the house was lost as the RCD in the main switchbox tripped. It wasn't a one off occurance either.
To cut a very long story short, by midnight I had found that, when the flue fan was sitting outside the boiler, its external case had a potential difference of 240VAC compared with the boiler chassis. Given the the fan is generally bolted to the chassis, this may well be the cause of the short circuit that was tripping the RCD. It appears this problem was fixed by hovering the fan; I guess there was something conductive in the large amounts of dust that had gathered in it over the years.
So anyway, we have hot water, and tomorrow (when I can keep an eye on my new pipework) we will have heat. Which is a good ending. Just remember the DIY mantra that this house has taught me; Nothing Is Easy.
Any readers who have visited our house will know it is a work in progress (I think it has been in progress for about 300 years now). The work is entering a new chapter, and the first paragraph of that chapter is a new boiler. The old one is in a part of the house we are going to demolish to make room for something better.
So this weekend I attempted a large amount of modification to the central heating system in order to accommodate this new boiler, and also to provide some pipework for the new sections of house we are planning to build. For one reason and another I wasn't actually installing the new boiler, that will be in a few weeks. So the old boiler remains connected, but valves have been installed so it can be removed without doing much work.
So I started this job on Saturday morning (Seiko was working Friday, so I took the kids socialising then). I had actually intended to do a bit of preparation on Friday (e.g. moving the furniture) and in fact the preparation took most of Saturday (clearing two rooms, lifting floorboards in four different places, a bit of joinery to support the new boiler, it all adds up). So not a great start, and in fact by close of play Saturday the central heating was still intact, since I'd found enough stuff to do without actually breaking it.
I got properly stuck in on Sunday, drained down large parts of the system and cut various bits of it up, joined them to other bits in new and interesting ways and built several new sections. This carried over into Monday and I was running out of time for the inevitable troubleshooting. So come 3 o'clock when I was ready to fill the system with water, I was a bit worried. If you count each connector as two chances to leak, and each 'T' in the system as three, I had over 80 chances of a leak.
Since I'd fitted so many valves to the system to make my life easier in future, Seiko and I went round opening each in turn and filling the system in sections in order that we wouldn't get all the leaks at once. Imagine our surprise and delight when we found that NOTHING leaked at all! This is unprecedented in the history of plumbing (well my plumbing anyway). In retrospect we should have seen it as a warning sign.
Lack of leaks with a cold fill is one thing, but you really want to check the joints with the system running hot, just to make sure. So I went to turn on the boiler (which hadn't been touched all weekend). Switched it on and 'click'. All mains power in the house was lost as the RCD in the main switchbox tripped. It wasn't a one off occurance either.
To cut a very long story short, by midnight I had found that, when the flue fan was sitting outside the boiler, its external case had a potential difference of 240VAC compared with the boiler chassis. Given the the fan is generally bolted to the chassis, this may well be the cause of the short circuit that was tripping the RCD. It appears this problem was fixed by hovering the fan; I guess there was something conductive in the large amounts of dust that had gathered in it over the years.
So anyway, we have hot water, and tomorrow (when I can keep an eye on my new pipework) we will have heat. Which is a good ending. Just remember the DIY mantra that this house has taught me; Nothing Is Easy.
posted by Tony @ 00:34
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