Problems with Stelrad

[DaleRCL]

It does sound a bit odd doesnt it? For a long time after the builder finished this job the customer witheld a large sum of money from him for all sorts of questionable reasons and on 8th December he still owed the builder the best part of £20k. The customer told me yesterday that BG came to look at his boiler because it wasn't working and while they were there they noticed the zone valve and pump were leaking so changed them. The zone valve and pump are in the loft and the boiler isnt, so I dont know how they noticed this leak, and if they did see a leak, why not just nip it up? there would have been absolutely no need to change them. Also, why did the customer not just add this complaint to his list of reasons to withhold money from the builder?

I think there is some salient piece of information that the customer isnt telling me.

Does anyone know, If they had BG homecare cover ( which is what they say they had) would this cover them to do the works they appear to have done? Because the customer is certainly not the sort of guy who would have paid for it if he could have just got me back to sort it for free.

 

[ServiceNumpty]

I'd go with Mickyg - 3rd party interference, unknown whether system was re-inhibited after works carried out.

 

[ChrisR]

Of course you can claim 3rd party interference - they've shot themselves in the foot with that.
BG wouldn't have drained much water. the parts they changed were high in the system and they always BUNG - .

I guess it was the metallurgist bit of me which Agile referred to.
If one cut the rads up and looked at them under a microscope, it would be easy enough to tell if they were faulty. There's about a dozen standard things that can go wrong with sheet steel. Then there's a load more things that could go wrong in the manufacture.
If they had characteristic corrosion you could suggest what caused it, to a point. Oxidising ions in solution could be blamed, but that wouldn't prove where they came from.
Nobody is going to analyse all the rads to look for a common fault in the steel itself, though they could all have thin spots with micro-cracks, have intergranular corrosion already, have inclusions rolled in, and on and on.

Lets say it turned out to be pinholing, or stress-corrosion cracking, both are common in corrosion of rads. Would there be chlorides in there? I can guarantee it. Not much, but it doesn't take much, so if you use Everflux, it's present. It wouldn't all flush out. Everflux are imho fibbing. It's probably easy enough to show that it doesn't attack copper in the right circumstances, which is what they're basing their statement on.
But I'm sure I could get it to attack copper...
But then, the chloride ( or other antagonist) could have come from anywhere. Sea air can be more than enough if the stock is left outside for long.

Hot + cold flushing is not what the standard says, so you're guilty. ( )
But it's also standard practice and doesn't cause a problem in general. So something else is wrong.
Swarf in rads causes pinholing. But why should there be any in these, particularly. LOADS of Stelrad rads would be doing it. I don't suppose yours are all the same sizes, etc.
Same for the steel they use - it would be a widespread problem.
Could be bad Everflux batch, but why no problem the other rad? Well that one could be passivated from previous treatments.

Could be you have high oxygen dissolution in your water for some reason - it's common.

Maybe the BG guys poured some hydrochloric in there, who knows?
A new set of rads could do the same thing, if there really IS some strange problem.

Too many possibilities, probably a combination. Nobody's going to be able to prove anything. YOU are probably the softest target, but I'd resist forever. You weren't the last guy there.

 

[roguetrader]

is there a water softener fitted??

 

[DaleRCL]

Thanks ChrisR for taking the time to post all that. It has certainly given me something to think about. And there is a water softener fitted, but the f&e tank fills from the fresh water. I double checked this on Thurs when I was there.

 

[Agile]

This is like a weekly serial!

We now hear that the Owner owes the builder about 20k which is a lot of money and this will have been for a year!

I would have expected the builder would have had the Owner in court a long time ago.

Maybe the builder poured the HCl into the system?

 

[DaleRCL]

The builder has been paid now