A new tenant moved in to a rented house in my road today, within a few hours she had hot water through the ceiling from the loft. Another neighbour who she'd already met came to get us (I'm a central heating man). When we got there the ceiling was already down, someone was saying a tank burst in the loft, which I was doubtful of as normally I find it's burst pipes. I went up in the loft to find it was like a sauna. I climbed over to the tanks and found that the vent from the hot water cylinder was scalding and being badly installed was hanging outside of the cold water storage tank.
Having just moved in the tenant didn't know how the central heating worked so flicked on the immersion because it had a label stuck on it to turn it on for hot water. It's an old immersion heater without an overheat cut off so boiled the cylinder, hence causing all that trouble. She'd turned it all off when it started leaking through the ceiling and the water had stopped.
I went home and told her come and get me if needed as she was waiting for the landlord to get back in contact and arrange for his plumber to fix it. A while later another neighbour informed me that she had been put up elsewhere and the landlord had been with a plumber. His solution is to replace the ball valve (no idea why) and reroute the vent pipe in to the tank like it's meant to be but no mention of replacing the lethal immersion heater.
When I see the neighbour I'll ask her about it to see if that's true and in case it is, what i want to know is, is it illegal for the landlord to leave the knowlingly faulty immersion heater all connected there? It's dangerous as that water can get so hot it could cause serious injury or even death.
Having just moved in the tenant didn't know how the central heating worked so flicked on the immersion because it had a label stuck on it to turn it on for hot water. It's an old immersion heater without an overheat cut off so boiled the cylinder, hence causing all that trouble. She'd turned it all off when it started leaking through the ceiling and the water had stopped.
I went home and told her come and get me if needed as she was waiting for the landlord to get back in contact and arrange for his plumber to fix it. A while later another neighbour informed me that she had been put up elsewhere and the landlord had been with a plumber. His solution is to replace the ball valve (no idea why) and reroute the vent pipe in to the tank like it's meant to be but no mention of replacing the lethal immersion heater.
When I see the neighbour I'll ask her about it to see if that's true and in case it is, what i want to know is, is it illegal for the landlord to leave the knowlingly faulty immersion heater all connected there? It's dangerous as that water can get so hot it could cause serious injury or even death.
