Help fitting a immersion heater

[voicey]

Hi there,

We're about to have builders in to do a small ground floor extension. The work will require the central heating system to be drained down - not a problem as we can use fan heaters and the immersion - or so I thought!

We don't have an immersion heater so my plan was to fit one and when the sparky turned up on site get him to wire it in. The cylinder is quite old but still had the data sticker on which told me the max size of immersion I could fit.

I bought one today and started work - water drained down no problem. I put a socket and breaker bar on the blanking plate where the immersion should go and it felt like it was just attached to the foam. It didn't feel like the plate was threaded into the cylinder at all. I stopped as I didn't want to damage anything.

How should I proceed? Do I need to chip the foam off around the plate first?

Any help would be much appreciated - thanks!

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• voicey
• 28 Mar 2013
• 1

Untitled

• voicey
• 28 Mar 2013
• 1

 

[Burnerman]

By all means slice around the blanking plug with a knife, but sometimes these plugs are very tight and don't like being disturbed.
You could try some heat from a head gun but when you do swing on your spanner, watch the copper doesn't tear around the plug threads....the boss is soldered into the tank.
You win some, you lose some with these, I find!
John

 

[picasso]

Also fill the cylinder with water it helps to support the cylinder walls while you try to tear the top off

 

[dcawkwell]

Yes firstly soak in a good bit of WD40.
Fill cylinder and try moving it.
Tapping the bar to get some vibration into the joint.

Hopefully it will move.
Heat around the joint may help.

The plug may be solid and won't move without damage.
The alternative is dril a hole and use a dremel to cut it out.

 

[Whitespirit66]

Second half of this video shows what's sometimes needed to get a stubborn immersion out. Same principle for your plug.

Take the batteries out of smoke alarm first!

 

[Nige F]

Hi there,

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• voicey
• 28 Mar 2013
• 1

Untitled

• voicey
• 28 Mar 2013
• 1

Heat is your friend With the cylinder drained - get the blowlamp on that blank - I used to do a lot of those , heated the blank until the sealing washer went BANG they came out easy then OR have the whole system full of water - roof tank and all, with the feed to cyl. open -and gently twist the socket bar - exposing a small area round the flange in this case will allow you to see you`re not distorting the cylinder

 

[hazetimesfive]

how long is your bar?

 

[HERTS P&D]

Mine's 2' long. Works every time.

Andy

 

[hazetimesfive]

i use rothenberger 24" never leave home without it.