It's this system again ...
As I mentioned at the end of that thread, we decamped to the church hall for a couple of months - smaller and cheaper to heat. Left the church just running on the frost protection, till it ran out of oil because I'd not been keeping a good enough eye on it
On the upside, without the boiler running at all, I was able to determine that there is a leak. At one point there was a significant drip from the ballcock, but it did seem to reduce after a while. Had a good look round, including moving some carpentry for a better look, and found this gem
To the right is a pair of 3" (or thereabouts) pipes that run along the bottom of the wall. To the left, the 2" pipes join together - and since the fan-coils were fitted then converts to 22mm copper.
My thoughts would be to cut the 3" pipes back a bit to clean metal, find compression fittings a bit like the ones in the picture and go straight to copper, binning the short bit of 2" iron to the left. Not planning on trying it myself - apart from lack of time, my insurance doesn't cover any form of plumbing (would double the premium).
Anyone in the S Cumbria area fancy tackling it ?
As an aside, I have learned a bit more about the history of the system. I did know that the oil boiler was 2nd hand in the 70s when the church got electricity, but nothing more. Last year an ex churchwarden died (in his 80s or 90s I think), and apparently as a youngster he would walk down to the church on a Saturday morning to light the old coke fired boiler - and keep it stoked up to heat the church ready for the service on Sunday. That would date the system at least back to the 50s, and I assume it wasn't new then.
As I mentioned at the end of that thread, we decamped to the church hall for a couple of months - smaller and cheaper to heat. Left the church just running on the frost protection, till it ran out of oil because I'd not been keeping a good enough eye on it
On the upside, without the boiler running at all, I was able to determine that there is a leak. At one point there was a significant drip from the ballcock, but it did seem to reduce after a while. Had a good look round, including moving some carpentry for a better look, and found this gem
To the right is a pair of 3" (or thereabouts) pipes that run along the bottom of the wall. To the left, the 2" pipes join together - and since the fan-coils were fitted then converts to 22mm copper.
My thoughts would be to cut the 3" pipes back a bit to clean metal, find compression fittings a bit like the ones in the picture and go straight to copper, binning the short bit of 2" iron to the left. Not planning on trying it myself - apart from lack of time, my insurance doesn't cover any form of plumbing (would double the premium
).Anyone in the S Cumbria area fancy tackling it ?
As an aside, I have learned a bit more about the history of the system. I did know that the oil boiler was 2nd hand in the 70s when the church got electricity, but nothing more. Last year an ex churchwarden died (in his 80s or 90s I think), and apparently as a youngster he would walk down to the church on a Saturday morning to light the old coke fired boiler - and keep it stoked up to heat the church ready for the service on Sunday. That would date the system at least back to the 50s, and I assume it wasn't new then.
