Sometimes you just have to bite you lip and say nowt !

[SimonH2]

Working on a customers site not long ago ... They were having a small industrial unit refurbed and turned into an office - some internal partition walls, new suspended ceiling, rewire, and central heating with a combi boiler. I was putting in IT cabling.

I'd been watching the plumbers occasionally and thinking they were actually doing a reasonably tidy job given the constraints. Then I noticed a hissing and bubbling noise near where I was working, and observed a certain amount of "hurried activity" on the part of the plumbers. The hissing was coming from a 22mm coupling - and I thought something along the lines of "they'll struggle to resolder that now the pipes are wet". Then I realised they were desperately trying to drain the system - without any drain points. They'd dropped the pipe off the last rad and were trying to drain the system by lowering it a bit - but it was still higher than the coupling.

Then it transpired that they'd missed soldering this joint completely. Well I suppose these things happen. There again, a quick dry test might well have pointed it out to them At this point I was tempted to ask whether they'd considered dry testing a system before filling it - but I don't think they'd have appreciated that. Bit lip, said nowt.

I wasn't back for a few days, but instead of finding the place nice and warm, it was still a bit parky. The decorator that was left to finish off a few jobs told me they'd had the heating working, but no hot water. The plumber had decided some pipes were the wrong way round (cold in and DHW out were swapped - and the repairs were "quite obvious"), and after they'd fixed that the boiler wouldn't fire at all. A short while later the Worcester guy arrived and was there for several hours. At one point I noticed him carrying a hair dryer in.

Later, someone else told me that the boiler guy had told them that many of their callouts are to new boilers with the electrics flooded - so always carry a hair drier in the van.

 

[HERTS P&D]

And the point is ???

Andy

 

[SimonH2]

Cock ups aren't the preserve of DIY.
Designing a system with no provision for draining down - it's a darn good job the carpet hadn't been laid given the amount of water about.
Skipping a dry test which would have saved them so much time and effort - they'd have saved more on that job than the cost of the dry test kit, and a lot more. This was a complete system install with about 8-10 rads, I'd consider the scope for at least one bad joint to be pretty high on that and worth a dry test.
Getting something as simple as pipe ordering wrong.
Breaking the boiler while fixing it.

Now, I've done some of those myself - not all of them, and certainly not at the same time/on the same job !

 

[Boilerman2]

Lets all hope that there are no problems with your IT cabling then, as pride often comes before a fall!!

 

[SimonH2]

All fine - and all tested/certified. And managed to avoid any falls But yes, I do sometimes make mistakes of my own, the trick is dealing with them without anyone noticing.

One section of dado trunking is a bit full, thanks to the sparky claiming the big section for a couple of T&Es and leaving the small section for two dozen data cables Had to take a multipair for the phones a different route as there wasn't room for it.
He seemed to believe that the mains can ONLY go in the middle section and segregation will be lost if it goes in the smaller top section. I wasn't in the mood for a discussion on why a piece of plastic should provide segregation one way but not the other - he was already whinging about how nice it must be having someone else put the containment in for you. I actually don't like those jobs too much, as you get whatever the sparky feels like providing and some of them seem to be short of a clue or two - but you just have to get on and deal with what you've got.

Having other trades just rip out your cables if they're in their way is a different matter, had that on another job

 

[SimonH2]

... so mr perfect i am off you have a nice day you kn@b head

Oh, aren't we so very grown up and adult today

By your attitude I'm guessing you're a plumber (of the worst kind) - and people wonder why certain trades have such a good reputation (or don't as the case may be).

And, if you'd read the thread, rather than skimming and reading the bits you wanted to be offended by, you'd know that yes, I have made my own mistakes. But this job seemed to be the worst collection of cock-ups in one go I've seen for a while.
It says a lot that the boiler manufacturers carry hairdryers in their vans to deal with flooded control electrics.

 

[roberta1000]

As you say - we all make mistakes, and sometimes the results can be quite nasty which is why we carry insurance or should do.

Some 40 years ago, just married and moved into our first house, we had the Gas Board fit our new cooker. When I came home from work my wife was complaining about a smell of gas so we called them out. Turned out that not a single joint in the pipe run had been soldered. All nicely cleaned and fluxed - just not soldered. It's as well to always bear in mind what could happen if you don't check and check again.

 

[SimonH2]

SMALL INDUSTRAIL UNIT8\10 radiators wow at least 8 rooms offices store rooms it must be like the tardis in there
peekak
see you alert moderators when ppl say something you dont agree with and while i may been a little over the top in a couple you actually alerted mod to all my posts your a sad little man

You must be very fit, all that jumping to conclusions you are doing.

FYI - I have not reported a single posting, I prefer to leave them up so everyone can make their own mind up as to the type of person you are. One or two of my replies have been deleted as well BTW - though I'm not sure why, unless it's because I quoted parts of your posts.

And actually, the place only has three rooms (if you discount the loos). Multiple rads in two of them - from memory 3 in a meeting room, and about 5 in the large main room. I'm not a heating design engineer, but I would guess they've done this to avoid the "one end of room hot, other end of room cold" problem so very prevalent where only a small number of rads/heaters are used in a large space (they are all on outside walls).