I recently posted about some weird observations relating to my open-fire's back boiler. E.g. pipes in side of chimney brest getting warm when C/H on but no fire going!
//www.diynot.com/forums/plumbing/back-boiler-pipes-getting-warm-without-fire-on.356478/
Anyway... mystery solved. The other day we'd run out of oil and so I'd been heating the house with the fire all day. I took the opportunity to go looking for warm pipes and find how the back boiler was hooked up. This helped me identify a flow and return popping out the floor in the airing cupboard and.....get this.....out into the bathroom, out into garage roof space, along garage, down to floor of garage, into utility room and T-in to the C/H pipe work straight after the C/H pump!
Why Why WHy?
Well, when we moved in two years ago and were having a new bathroom fitted, I agreed to idea of having the hot water tank (gravity fed) moved from the airing cupboard up to the attic. This was to facilitate having a pumped power shower with thermostatic bar tap installed. Today I had boss of said plumbing company out and he agrees with my best guess at what happened... One guy dealt with disconnecting the tank and moving it up to attic (while extending the 28mm gravity flow and return up there), while some other guy saw these two other 15mm pipes popping out of the floor in that cupboard, ASSUMED they were connected to radiators and so decided to install many many meters of copper pipe to hook them into the rad circuit downstairs.
I just think its a miracle this thing didn't blow up. When the CH pump is not on and the fire is going, the heat has just been rising to the highest point and there's a point where the skirting board is burnt black even though the pipe is a good 2cm from it! Also a small length of squishy grey pipe lagging had melted onto the pipe! The other issue is that a good proportion of my C/H water has been getting pumped into (effectively) a radiator in the chimney flue, connected by miles of pipework running through a freezing garage.
Anyone got any ideas on what I should do? Plumber boss is saying he'll get a guy in to put it back to how it's thought it was originally; i.e. flow and return from back boiler simply T-ing into the 28mm DHW primary flow and return in the airing cupboard. He says its not a proper back boiler and so reconfiguring to a fully-pumped setup with neutralizer can't be done. (It doesn't have its own cold-feed and vent.) I said Im happy to just have the fire helping to heat the DHW via the gravity fed coil circuit. Can anyone see any problems with doing this?
//www.diynot.com/forums/plumbing/back-boiler-pipes-getting-warm-without-fire-on.356478/
Anyway... mystery solved. The other day we'd run out of oil and so I'd been heating the house with the fire all day. I took the opportunity to go looking for warm pipes and find how the back boiler was hooked up. This helped me identify a flow and return popping out the floor in the airing cupboard and.....get this.....out into the bathroom, out into garage roof space, along garage, down to floor of garage, into utility room and T-in to the C/H pipe work straight after the C/H pump!
Why Why WHy?
Well, when we moved in two years ago and were having a new bathroom fitted, I agreed to idea of having the hot water tank (gravity fed) moved from the airing cupboard up to the attic. This was to facilitate having a pumped power shower with thermostatic bar tap installed. Today I had boss of said plumbing company out and he agrees with my best guess at what happened... One guy dealt with disconnecting the tank and moving it up to attic (while extending the 28mm gravity flow and return up there), while some other guy saw these two other 15mm pipes popping out of the floor in that cupboard, ASSUMED they were connected to radiators and so decided to install many many meters of copper pipe to hook them into the rad circuit downstairs.
I just think its a miracle this thing didn't blow up. When the CH pump is not on and the fire is going, the heat has just been rising to the highest point and there's a point where the skirting board is burnt black even though the pipe is a good 2cm from it! Also a small length of squishy grey pipe lagging had melted onto the pipe! The other issue is that a good proportion of my C/H water has been getting pumped into (effectively) a radiator in the chimney flue, connected by miles of pipework running through a freezing garage.
Anyone got any ideas on what I should do? Plumber boss is saying he'll get a guy in to put it back to how it's thought it was originally; i.e. flow and return from back boiler simply T-ing into the 28mm DHW primary flow and return in the airing cupboard. He says its not a proper back boiler and so reconfiguring to a fully-pumped setup with neutralizer can't be done. (It doesn't have its own cold-feed and vent.) I said Im happy to just have the fire helping to heat the DHW via the gravity fed coil circuit. Can anyone see any problems with doing this?
