Is it safe to move a hot water tank to the loft?

[F1yTrap]

Is it safe to move a hot water tank into the loft space? I have 4 kids and my wife is paranoid that the tank is going to burst and leak "boiling" water onto them all as they sleep.

There was a recent case involving a young child being fatally scolded in this way.

What are the common pitfalls I can plan against?

 

[TicklyT]

The unfortunate accident that made the news was the result of a failure of the COLD water storage tank that had been overheated by a faulty immersion heater. It was not a failure of the hot cylinder.

More recent immersion heaters incorporate an additional overheat cutout to reduce the chances of another occurance.

For a gravity system, the hot cylinder needs to be below the level of the cold water storage for the system to function. That may be impossible to achieve if headroom is limited.

The reduced height of the hot cylinder open vent can make pumped supplies to showers etc. problematic.

Heat loss from the hot cylinder will be higher because of the lower temperature in the loft. The losses from the cylinder could no longer be considered as a contribution to the heating of the habitable space in the house.

 

[londonboy]

A little bit of overkill maybe but I saw recently in a commercial building a big steel tray (with wastepipe) underneath the tanks, could maybe give your wife a bit more piece of mind

 

[peekay53]

A little bit of overkill maybe but I saw recently in a commercial building a big steel tray (with wastepipe) underneath the tanks, could maybe give your wife a bit more piece of mind

that is called a bund and is there to catch overflow