Worried about my plumbers competence

[achrn]

I've had an extension built, and while the house was being battered decided to completely re-plumb everything because the previous system was old, a bit temperamental and a pain to maintain (gravity hot water, gas-fired Rayburn, no service valves, pump inaccessible).

The builder has appointed a plumber, but I'm becoming nervous about his competence. However, maybe I'm wrong and he's right, so I'd welcome views about how concerned I should be:

1: Condensate drain from the new Worcester Bosch system boiler boiler is routed out through the external wall it's mounted on, drops vertically about 2m, then turns horizontal, runs about 1m, round the corner of the building and another 0.5m until it discharges above the grate at the bottom of a downpipe (which goes to a soakaway under my lawn). However, the boiler is wall-mounted about a metre from where the kitchen sink will be. It's above a worksurface that the sink is in. I think it should drop from the boiler, turn below worktop and connect to the waste from the sink. I queried the external drain with the plumber and he said it had to go external, it was not possible (I think he said not permitted) to run it internally.

2: Heating is S-plan with two zones plus hot water, so there are three 2-port valves and a bypass. The bypass is just 15mm copper with a manual turn-wheel valve on it. I thought building regs guidance recommended (though admittedly not mandated) an automatic bypass on all new systems.

3: The boiler has been in about two weeks and I haven't heard the pump stop yet. Hot water is off, heating is turned down (12C - the house is still unoccupied), but the pump runs continuously. I go in every couple of days to see how things are progressing (normally evenings when builder etc already left) and have noticed that the pump is always running, though I've practically never seen the boiler burner firing. The plumber says it's fine, it's just the pump has an over-run time, but I'm sure I've been there when it has been running more than 30 minutes (and maybe as much as an hour) without any gas being burnt. Does it really have an over-run measured in hours?

4: I asked for a filter on the primary. He's put in a Fernox TF1. He's put it in the flow from the boiler and put it in with the arrow pointing opposite to the flow of water. In the return is preferred, I believe, but maybe flow is OK. However, surely the arrow must point the direction the water flows? He says he's checked with Fernox technical support and they say it's OK the way round he's put it. If the flow direction doesn't matter, why have arrows on it? Why all the coloured washers (which he doesn't seem to have used, though it is not orientated in the flow direction it comes out of the box).

5: I explicitly specified a larger- than-usual cupboard for the hot water cylinder (it's 1m x 1.2m in plan) and explicitly said I'd done so because I wanted the plumbing components readily accessible and readily maintainable, but what I've got is a rats-nest tangle of pipes and valves at tight to one side of the cupboard and a cylinder most of the way to the other side with pipes spanning the gap between.

How worried should I be about the stuff I can't see under floors and in walls and the stuff I don't know anything about so don't know what's right?

 

[picasso]

Your plumber is lying to you (he maybe a plumber but he is not a heating engineer) ask him to put his tools away and leave site (pay him upto date) and get your self a recommended heating bod, could be the builder is using cheap inexperienced labour.

 

[FiremanT]

Definitely should be internal, where possible.

. The bypass is just 15mm copper with a manual turn-wheel valve on it. .... an automatic bypass on all new systems.[/i]

Seems a strange thing to be penny pinching on

but the pump runs continuously

.


Certainy sounds as if it is wired wrongly, or there is a fault

4: I asked for a filter on the primary. He's put in a Fernox TF1. He's put it in the flow from the boiler and put it in with the arrow pointing opposite to the flow of water. In the return is preferred, I believe, but maybe flow is OK.

It should be on the return, to stop stuff BEFORE getting to the heat exchanger.
I have never used a TF!, but the instructions are here:
http://www.fernox.us/files/Fernox/Content/PDF/English/TF1 Instruction Leaflet Nov 2011 .pdf

but what I've got is a rats-nest tangle of pipes and valves at tight to one side of the cupboard and a cylinder most of the way to the other side with pipes spanning the gap between.

I think it would be fair to say that we would all love to see a picture

You may wish to follow Piccasso's good advice

 

[Dan Robinson]

A photo would be handy, but we're harsh critics on here.

Your plumber sounds like a complete peena7se. Get shot of him and get someone in who can read. Boiler instructions - especially WB are hardly rocket science.

 

[ServiceNumpty]

The pump should be wired to the Worcester Bosch for pump overrun purposes.(Will invalidate warranty) It may be wired to a permanent supply. Internal Condensate is preferred, auto bypass instead of lockshield, and the list goes on.
Photo's definately may help

 

[Whitespirit66]

Just about everything your 'plumber' has told you is B S, and he is building in potential problems for the future.

The condensate should be run internally if poss, to prevent the all too common problem of it freezing and leaving you without ch and hw when you most need it. The sink waste next to the boiler is the only sensible option. There may be a problem with the type of drainage that he has run it into, as the acidic condensate should go to foul water.

The bypasss should be an auto version and the pump sounds like it's wired wrong. Common sense dictates that a filter installed to arrest particles before they lodge in the boiler should go on the return, not after the boiler on the flow. It soulds odd that he may have changed it from the orientation set in the factory (vertical pipe/flowing upwards), and still got it wrong.

It would be a lot easier to tackle these problems now, whilst still at the construction stage and unoccupied. Will be a lot easier and less disruptive than doing it further down the line. Unfortunately, as you suspect, there may be other surprises waiting. If it were me, I would be looking for someone else to check and complete the plumbing.

 

[gigz]

As above, don't worry about the coloured washers as they"re used for orientation of thr tri body

 

[achrn]

I'm not sure what pictures are wanted, but here's the bottom of the boiler showing the condensate setting off through the wall. On the other side it currently just juts out - the route I described is what he said it will do. Having found the installation instructions in the house I see that they say if it must go outside it should run internally as far as possible and change to 32mm pipe before going out. It doesn't do that.

Boiler

• achrn
• 15 Feb 2013
• 1

View of the bottom of boiler. Wall it is mounted on is external.

With regards the the 'rats nest' maybe I'm being unfair - maybe this is as good as can be expected from two-zones-plus-hot-water, since there are apparently a lot of components to fit in, but this is what I have on the wall of the cupboard:

Cylinder cupboard GA

• achrn
• 15 Feb 2013
• 1

General view of pipework in hot water cylinder cupboard

Should this be more tidy? Or am I being unreasonable? I feel certain he's got the TF1 in the wrong place, connected the wrong way round, and the condensate drain is wrong, but am I wrong to hope for a tidier layout here?

This part of the house is completely new all the pipework is new, the boiler is new in a new kitchen that's down one floor and about 5m to the right. There was completely free reign on routing all pipes, so they could come into this cupboard wherever was convenient.

TF1 at bottom right. It is on flow from the boiler. Water is flowing up but the arrow on it is pointing down. The instructions say that it comes ready for upwards flow so it's been changed to wrong. For downwards flow you should apparently use the red O-ring and red spacer, but those are lying on the floor of the cupboard. I think he's used black spacer and blue o-ring.

So flow comes up through the TF1 then turns over and goes down through the valves, though to get to the upstairs valve it dog-legs round the cold feed to cylinder (has the blue things on it - presumably they are pressure limiter?) and the hot water running from the cylinder down to the ground floor and another pipe that comes off the primary leg to the cylinder which has the pressure gauge on it.

Filling loop is behind the upstairs valve. I don't see a check valve anywhere, but could it be built-in to the loop assembly (visible above the 2-port valve)?

At the very back are some pipes that take hot and cold to the bathroom behind the wall at the back of the cupboard.

Bypass is the 15mm with red wheel valve that's nearly central in the above. It comes from the flow where you can see above and into the return just before it dives into the floor.

The floor looks like this:

Cupboard floor

• achrn
• 15 Feb 2013
• 1

Floor of the hot water cylinder cupboard, where all pipes enter

From right to left: flow from boiler (lagged) flow to downstairs heating behind and return from downstairs heating in front (both lagged) return to boiler with the 15mm bypass coming off the top, hot to ground floor, cold from ground floor, first floor flow, first floor return, pipes at the back going through wall to bathroom.

To clarify one other thing - the pump is built into the boiler, not wired up separately. I'm not sure therefore how it decides to run so long, but could it be that the boiler is wired wrong such that it is seeing a permanent demand and the primary from boiler through bypass and back has so little heat loss that it gets heated to maximum with just a few seconds burner every several minutes and I've just never spotted it burning?

 

[Dan Robinson]

An interesting question to ask him is "why has he chosen a fixed by-pass over a differential by-pass?".

The answer (depending on the boiler) should be because of modulating heating pumps.


A couple of pictures of the overall view of the airing cupboard would be handy to give a context, as well as a shot or two of the condense pipe. Which should be going outside if there is a kitchen sink nearby

From your shots though, and ignoring the stupid location of the filter, I would give that pipe work a C minus.


I wonder if he has put the filter on the flow because it is the first pipe in the cupboard you can reach? Is the return tuck at the back out on the way - or the one right close to the floor?

I think TF1's are shlt anyway - every one we fitted leaked within the first 2 years.

 

[gigz]

Was just about to say its a tidy job then realised its not from the op

 

[achrn]

Returns are all close to the floor:

Cupboard floor

• achrn
• 15 Feb 2013
• 1

Floor of the hot water cylinder cupboard, where all pipes enter

Third pipe from the right that gets just above floor and then heads left (lagged) is one heating return, it meets the other heating return head on at a tee, the combined water then turns vertical before turning towards the camera and joining the cylinder return at a tee, heads to the right of the picture, turns at the wall, gets to a tee and heads off down into the floor towards the boiler.

At that last tee the leg heading vertically is the bypass, though it dog-legs a bit on its way to the wheel valve.

Michele5041, yes that's the sort of effect I was hoping for.

 

[Tibbot]

The builder has appointed a plumber

Usually OP's are asked for as much information as possible. However in this instance, the above is all you need to state, as we can guess the rest.

 

[achrn]

a shot or two of the condense pipe. Which should be going outside if there is a kitchen sink nearby

Is there a 'not' missing there?

There's not much more to show of the condensate pipe - at the outside at the moment there's just 100mm of pipe sticking straight out from the wall and dripping on the patio. He says he's going to run it down to ground (which is 300mm or so below floor level indoors) then run it horizontal round the corner and to the down-pipe gully, but it doesn't do that yet.

 

[swbjackson]

Is that an unvented cylinder? Looks like a pressure reducing valve and an expansion relief valve in the picture with a stop tap after it on the feed to the cylinder. If so that is very wrong, there should be no valves between the cylinder and the expansion relief valve.

 

[ServiceNumpty]

tbh as we can't get a feel of the space available, it all looks a bit tight for future maintenance and parts replacement. Sometimes its worthwhile to try and plan the pipework before hand.